'A new era': NASA strikes asteroid in key test of planetary defense

How cool is this?!😎 The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor hit its target 10 months after blasting off from California on its pioneering mission☄️ NASA DART Dimorphos

hit its target, the space rock Dimorphos, at 7:14 pm Eastern Time , 10 months after blasting off from California on its pioneering mission.

Its egg-like shape and craggy, boulder-dotted surface finally came into clear view in the last few minutes, as DART raced toward it at roughly 14,500 miles per hour. Ground telescopes -- which can't see the asteroid system directly but can detect a shift in patterns of light coming from it -- should provide a definitive orbital period in the coming days and weeks.

"There's a lot of them, and it's incredibly exciting to have lost count," said DART mission planetary astronomer Christina Thomas. How much momentum DART imparts on Dimorphos will depend on whether the asteroid is solid rock, or more like a"rubbish pile" of boulders bound by mutual gravity -- a property that's not yet known.

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