[imagesource: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL]

Humans one, asteroid zero.

There were wild scenes of celebration in the NASA control room as it became clear that the $330-million DART mission was going to be a smash hit.

Earlier this week, roughly seven million miles from Earth, a NASA spacecraft crashed head-on into the Dimorphos asteroid in the “first real-world test of humanity’s ability to nudge a threatening body off course before it could crash into Earth”.

Essentially, we’re trying to be proactive to ensure we don’t meet a similar fate to the dinosaurs roughly 66 million years ago.

Or, to use the words of a parody Twitter account set up in honour of the spacecraft:

THIS ONE IS FOR THE DINOSAURS

— DART the Asteroid Slayer (@DARTprobe) September 26, 2022

The widely-shared footage of the moment of impact shows DART slamming into Dimorphos from the spacecraft’s perspective before the feed goes dead.

Business Insider SA reports that the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), based in Sutherland, captured images of the moment which “shows debris flying off the asteroid” using its Lesedi telescope:

Lesedi was installed in 2017 and is one of SAAO’s newest telescopes.

It is a 1-metre telescope, that functions in the visible and ultraviolet wavelengths and boasts a custom-made wide-field camera.

The images were spliced together to create this GIF:

Last night, Nicolas Erasmus (SAAO) and Amanda Sickafoose (@planetarysci) successfully observed DART’s impact with Dimorphos using the Mookodi instrument on the SAAO’s 1-m Lesedi telescope.@fallingstarIfA also did a very similar measurement using ATLAS-Sutherland.#DART #NASA pic.twitter.com/olr4gV5SOV

— SAAO (@SAAO) September 27, 2022

It’s not exactly Hollywood blockbuster stuff but let’s reiterate that this took place around seven million miles from Earth after years of planning and a 10-month voyage through space.

Most of us get excited when we nail a parallel parking mission, especially if there happens to be a small crowd watching on.

According to Gizmodo, astronomers with the ATLAS project also chronicled the event:

Short for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, ATLAS is an asteroid impact early warning system based in Hawaii and funded by NASA…

A sped-up timelapse shows a large plume produced by the impact and moving in the direction of the binary asteroid system.

Observe:

ATLAS observations of the DART spacecraft impact at Didymos! pic.twitter.com/26IKwB9VSo

— ATLAS Project (@fallingstarIfA) September 27, 2022

Striking the asteroid was a success, and worthy of celebration. However, further monitoring will still take place:

Views of Dimorphos’s surface looked very rubble pile-like, suggesting a loose conglomeration of materials. If that’s the case, Dimorphos may have done tremendous damage to the asteroid, but we need more data to be sure. At the very least, DART produced a substantial cloud of dust.

As to when we’ll know the degree to which Dimorphos’s orbital trajectory was altered, that could take anywhere from several days to several weeks. Regardless, it’ll be a fascinating result.

I reckon we can claim it as a win for now, until proven otherwise.

It’s what the dinosaurs would have wanted.

[sources:businsider&gizmodo]