He was talking after NASA launched its first mission to deflect an asteroid. The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft, built with the sole purpose of being crashed against "moonlet" Dimorphos, left California in the late hours of the evening to head towards the asteroid an...
Today experts estimate about 15 percent of space rocks are double or perhaps even triple asteroid systems, according to the European Space Agency. And asteroid pairs have even slammed into Earth over the course of its long history. Researchers know this from double impact craters, likely caused...
NASA's surprising reason for crashing into an asteroid's moon NASA's asteroid crash captured in dramatic before and after pictures Boom! NASA just slammed into an asteroid and filmed the crash Asteroid hunters capture footage of NASA smashing into space rock ...
The goal: slam into the small asteroid moon Dimorphos at an eyewatering speed of 6.3 kilometers per second (14,000 mph / Mach 18). Ten months later, the spacecraft has accomplished exactly that, successfully crashing into a target about 160 meters (530 ft) wide just 17 meters away from...
Is NASA Really Crashing a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid? Is NASA Aware of Any Earth-Threatening Asteroids? When Was the Last Time an Asteroid Hit Earth? How Did Perseverance Mars Rover Pick Its Landing Spot? What if an Asteroid Was Going To Hit Earth?
The JPL-managed Deep Impact spacecraft smashed a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, then chased down Comet Hartley 2 for an up-close look in 2010. And JPL's Dawn spacecraft orbited Vesta, the second-largest object in the asteroid belt, before heading off to study the belt's bigges...
Cook also said thatcomputer simulations showing Ares I crashing into the tower only under certainvery specific weather conditions. "The wind conditionthat we are concerned about is a southerly wind at 34 knots. In our estimatethat would only happen about 0.3 percent of the time in any case,"...
The idea of an asteroid from outer space crashing into Earth has captured the imaginations of science fiction directors for decades. But here at NASA, we take potentially hazardous near-Earth objects seriously. We have a planetary defense office that plans for every scenario—we’ve even practiced...
Thanks to Cassini, we know the moons of Saturn more intimately than any other rocky worlds beyond the asteroid belt. These planetary bodies have liquids, they have water, they have atmospheres. The findings have shown that even hundreds of millions of miles from the warmth of a star, pla...
The large binary asteroid Didymos poses no threat to Earth. But by crashing a probe into its moon, NASA will complete the world’s first full-scale planetary defense mission as a proof of concept.