What's next: A few years after the impact, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will conduct a follow-up investigation of Dimorphos, and the larger asteroid in the system, Didymos. While there are currently no asteroids on a direct impact course with Earth right now, there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids – more than 27,000 in all shapes and sizes. It was also the first time humans have altered the dynamics of a solar system body in a measurable way, according to the European Space Agency. This was the agency’s first full-scale demonstration of this type of technology on behalf of planetary defense. Less than an hour ago, a s pacecraft intentionally hit an asteroid known as Dimorphos. NASA and engineers from its DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, are giving a news conference to discuss what they learned from the mission. “You got to enjoy the moment,' Reynolds said, describing that the team had practiced 'all types of geometries and scenarios' in preparation for the mission.Įlena Adams, the DART mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said she was relieved it was over.Īfter more than 1,000 people working on DART for more than seven years, she said it is 'absolutely wonderful to do something this amazing and we are so excited to be done.' The team approached the last 2 minutes - a period of time when they could no longer send commands to the spacecraft - as a special time, he said at a news conference following the mission on Monday. That was how Ed Reynolds, the DART Project manager at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, described the mood inside the mission command center just minutes before the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART, was set to hit the asteroid Dimorphos. DART Project manager at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Ed Reynolds speaks at the DART press conference in Laurel, Maryland, on Monday, September 26.

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