Success of NASA's 'DART' spacecraft in altering asteroid orbits

The American space agency's (NASA) Dart spacecraft has managed to remove it from its own orbit by hitting an asteroid hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth. Not only that, Dart is also able to destroy it into several pieces. NASA said this in a statement on Tuesday (October 11). The organization also claims that it has been successful by referring to this campaign called 'Save the World' as a breakthrough.

Last September 26, NASA's 'Dart' spacecraft was able to hit an asteroid called 'Dimorphs' coming towards the Earth. This created many craters, scattering dust and debris over vast areas of space; Which looks a lot like a comet. A flash of light was also observed from it during the impact. 

NASA monitored the impact of the spacecraft on the 525-foot asteroid with powerful telescopes in Chile and South Africa. Finally, after a long observation, NASA said in a statement on Tuesday that they were able to change the orbit of the asteroid through this groundbreaking operation. Through this, for the first time, humans have been able to change the orbit of an asteroid, the director of NASA also claimed.

He said, 'Asteroid Dimorphs was coming towards the earth at a speed of about 14 thousand miles per hour. Scientists were able to reduce the orbital period of the asteroid by about 32 minutes. We finally succeeded in changing its orbit. This ground-breaking mission proves that NASA is ready to deal with whatever the universe throws at Earth.' 

Those concerned say that there is no doubt that NASA's breakthrough successful mission has attracted the attention of astronauts. They will emphasize on conducting more such operations at appropriate times in the future. However, scientists see the possibility of a celestial object hitting the earth in the near future. 

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART spacecraft and the Save the World mission cost NASA about 325 million US dollars.