Moments before Dart spacecraft strikes asteroid in NASA defence test

NASA’s Dart spacecraft on Monday completed its mission after deliberately colliding with an asteroid – Dimporphos – in a defense test against cosmic objects.

The video recorded by Dart’s on-board camera and uploaded by the US space agency shows the spacecraft approaching the target asteroid, moments before the collision. The spectacular view as Dart speeds at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph) towards the harmless asteroid is humanity’s first attempt to shift the position of any other natural object in space.

A lowdown on collision in five points:

Scientists expected the impact of collision with the asteroid – located 9.6 million kilometres – away “will carve out a crater, and alter the asteroid’s orbit”. They said that it will be some time before it is revealed how much the asteroid’s path was changed.

The mission cost $325 million to hit a 525-foot (160-metre) asteroid named ‘Dimorphos’. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.

The collision happened 10 months after Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft – of the size of a vending machine – navigated to its target using technology created by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

After the collision, within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures with boulders and rubble on the surface. The last image froze on the screen as the radio transmission ended. The photos of the impact were captured by a mini satellite – Italian Cubesat- released from Dart two weeks ago.

As per data, less than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 460-foot (140-metre) range have been discovered, according to NASA. And fewer than 1 per cent of the millions of smaller asteroids, capable of widespread injuries, are known to human beings.