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Mar 7, 2023

New Results From NASA’s DART Mission Confirm We Could Deflect Deadly Asteroids

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

This larger-than-expected result shows the change in Dimorphos’ orbit was not just from the impact of the DART spacecraft. The larger part of the change was due to a recoil effect from all the ejected material flying off into space, which Ariel Graykowski of the SETI Institute and colleagues estimated as between 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent of the asteroid’s total mass.

A First Success

The success of NASA’s DART mission is the first demonstration of our ability to protect Earth from the threat of hazardous asteroids.

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