By Emegwoako C. Paschal
On Monday evening, September 26th, NASA’s unmanned spacecraft collided with an asteroid. The mission was carried out by NASA in order to gain a better understanding of how we can divert potentially dangerous asteroids away from our vulnerable planet.
At 7:14 p.m. ET Monday, the probe collided with Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet circling the larger asteroid Didymos, knocking the large space rock slightly off its orbit around the larger asteroid.
The DART mission is the first true test of whether NASA will be able to push a potentially dangerous asteroid off a collision course with Earth if the need arises.
According to NASA, neither asteroids pose a threat to the Earth.
