Dimorphos: NASA flies spacecraft into asteroid in direct hit

Jonathan Amos - BBC Science Correspondent

 

The American space agency's Dart probe has smashed into an asteroid, destroying itself in the process.

The collision was intentional and designed to test whether space rocks that might threaten Earth could be nudged safely out of the way.

Dart's camera returned an image per second, right up to the moment of impact with the target - a 160m-wide object called Dimorphos.

What had been a steady image stream cut out as the probe was obliterated.

Controllers, based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL), erupted with joy as Dimorphos filled the field of view on Dart's camera just before then going blank. Initial calculations suggest the impact was a mere 17m off the exact centre of Dimorphos.

It will be some weeks before scientists on the Nasa-led mission know for sure whether their experiment has worked, but Dr Lori Glaze, the director of...Read more here.