Update: 'Dart' alters asteroid orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A NASA spacecraft, named Dart, rammed headlong into an asteroid at 14,000 mph on Sept. 26 in a dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth. The event happed 7M miles from Earth. Scientists expected the impact to carve a crater, hurl rocks and dirt into space and alter the asteroid’s orbit. “We have impact!” Mission Control’s Elena Adams announced, jumping up and down and thrusting arms skyward. Worldwide telescopes caught the impact but Dart’s radio signal abruptly stopped. It will take as long as a couple of months to determine how much the asteroid’s path was changed. The $325M mission was the first attempt to shift the position of any natural object in space. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded reporters earlier in the day via Twitter that, “No, this is not a movie plot,” in a pre-recorded video. "We’ve all seen ... 'Armageddon,' (with Bruce Willis) but the real-life stakes are high.” Dart is an acronym for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. (The AP 09/27/22) NASA’s DART mission will slam into an asteroid: Live updates | AP News 

UPDATE: Dart successfully alters asteroid's orbit 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -'Dart' plowed into the harmless asteroid millions of miles away shifting its orbit, NASA said Oct. 11 in announcing the results of its save-the-world test. The space agency attempted the test Sept. 26 to see if in a potential future killer rock could be nudged away from Earth. The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos hurling debris into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble over several thousand miles. It took days of telescope observations to determine how much the impact altered the orbit path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a bigger space rock. Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists said the impact shortened the asteroid's orbit about 32 minutes. (The AP 10/22/22) Smashing success: NASA asteroid strike results in big nudge | News | wtva.com