“This is for dinosaurs”: the world reacted to the destruction of the asteroid by NASA
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The crash of the spaceship this time was cause for celebration. The Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission on Tuesday was humanity’s first ever attempt to strike an asteroid. The Guardian.
NASA and Johns Hopkins scientists cheered and hugged each other after Dart, the size of a vending machine, successfully crashed into Dimorphos, a football field-sized asteroid that posed no danger to Earth.
Online viewers and astrophiles also had a jcj,sq day. One Twitter user created an account with the username “DART the asteroid slayer” and tweeted, “I’m going to ruin this asteroid’s entire career.” And later: “THIS IS FOR DINOSAURS.”
There were many other dinosaur revenge jokes: “we just slammed an asteroid, humans-1 dinosaurs-0”.
Now the researchers want to confirm that the impact changed the asteroid’s orbit. NASA expects Dimorphos’ orbit around the larger asteroid Didyma, which has a diameter of 780 meters, to shrink by about 1%, or about 10 minutes.
The successful planetary defense demonstration was visible from Earth, including from the South African Astronomical Observatory and ATLAS (Last Asteroid Impact Alert System) in Hawaii.
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