Asteroid Strike
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA says a spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away last month succeeded in shifting its orbit.
The space agency announced the results of the experiment Tuesday. NASA attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way.
The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble. It took consecutive nights of telescope observations to determine how much the impact altered the asteroid’s path around its companion, a bigger space rock.
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