Featured Image Credit: ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty
Most spacecraft crashes offer devastating and heartbreaking footage that is difficult to look at, but this particular NASA craft received jubilant applause when it smacked head first into an asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour, and it might be the key to a world-threatening issue facing Earth in the next decade.
While much of NASA's job is to uncover unknown and fascinating parts of the universe or to take humans to places they haven't been before, but sometimes even the most complex - and important - of tasks can feel like goofing around.
That's certainly the case when it came to their 1,260-pound Double Asteroid Redirection Test, otherwise known in short as DART, as this $330,000,000 project had a purpose simply to be destroyed, as reported by CBS News.
With Dimorphos - a 525-foot asteroid orbiting the larger Didymos - in its sights, DART's goal was to test humanity's capabilities to deter the threat of an impending collision, and it does this by launching itself at the space rock at 14,000 miles per hour.
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The collision itself occurred around 7 million miles from the control base on Earth, and images were transmitted at around one-per-second with a roughly 45 second delay between our planet and DART as it barreled towards the asteroid.
Not only did it prove to be a successful test, but NASA also released footage of the crash, which shows the incredible crawl towards an eventual impact.
Members of the control center can be seen cheering as the images get closer and closer, until the point at which the display cuts out, signaling that DART has done its job.
While many rightfully found the situation amusing, with some declaring that "it took 66 million years but we finally avenged our dinosaurs," it could actually be the key humanity needs to avoid mass destruction in under a decade.
It was recently revealed by NASA that 2024 YR4 - a 196-foot asteroid around 27 million miles away - is currently on course for Earth, and would likely be capable of destroying an entire city upon impact.
Initial projects indicated that there was just a 1% chance that it would strike our planet, but scientists have recently doubled the chances which has made many start to worry.
It could then be the right idea for DART-like projects to ramp up, as suggested by one famous physicist, as it's better to be prepared, having the apparatus at your disposal and not need it than be stuck once it's too late to change things.
Unfortunately, researchers have but a few more months to study 2024 YR4 before it disappears, resurfacing once again in 2028, so they'll have to gather as much data as they can in order to inform any contingency plans that are to be put in place.
If DART was successful with the 525-foot Dimorphos though, you'd have to imagine that diverting the 196-foot current threat wouldn't be too much of an issue.
