NASA’s DART impactor shows how planetary defense can work

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From Ars Technica:
"When the NASA DART mission slammed into a small asteroid, we knew with great precision how much the spacecraft weighed and how fast it traveled. If you combine that with our estimates of the motion and mass of its target asteroid, Dimorphos, then you could easily do the math and estimate how much momentum would be lost by the asteroid and what that would mean for its orbit. That bit of math would suggest that Dimorphos' orbit should end up roughly seven minutes shorter.

Instead, the orbit was shortened by a half hour—over four times that number."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03 ... -can-work/

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From NASA:
"NASA’s DART Data Validates Kinetic Impact as Planetary Defense Method"

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-dar ... nse-method

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From CNN:
"Hubble Space Telescope captured ‘movie’ of spacecraft slamming into asteroid"

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/world/na ... index.html

I don't recall if I posted this before - apologies if I did.

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From Ars Technica:
"New VLT data reveals more about aftermath of DART vs. asteroid collision"

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03 ... telescope/

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