At 7:14 p.m. EDT (23:14 UTC), our #DartMission successfully impacted its target, non-hazardous asteroid Dimorphos, in the world’s first planetary defense mission.⁣ ⁣ The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) aims to demonstrate that the path of an asteroid can be changed using a kinetic impactor. A vending machine-size spacecraft deliberately crashed into a stadium-size asteroid at 14,000 mph (22,500 km/h).⁣ ⁣ This test hopes to show that kinetic impact is a viable technology that could be deployed someday to prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth, should one be discovered. There are no known asteroid threats to Earth for at least the next 100 years.⁣ ⁣ 1. The final 5.5 minutes leading the intentional collision with asteroid Dimorphos. This video is 10x faster than reality, except for the last six images, which are shown at the same rate that the spacecraft returned them. Both Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos are visible at the start. At the end, Dimorphos fills the field of vi...