NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid – photos show the last moments of the successful DART mission

Didymos (bottom right) and its smaller moonlet Dimorphos (center) were the targets of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

In a world first, NASA has crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to push the rocky traveler off its trajectory. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test – or DART – is meant to test one potential approach that could prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth. David Barnhart is a professor of astronautics at the University of Southern California and director of the Space Engineering Research Center there. He watched NASA’s live stream of the successful mission and explains what is known so far.

This video, sped up 10 times actual speed, shows a series of images taken one second apart by the DART spacecraft as it approached Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos before colliding with Dimorphos. The last few images are shown in real speed.