Survival of humanity may one day depend on that capability to change asteroids’ courses.
Out of the many apocalyptic scenarios for the world and its inhabitants, probably no one is so frightening – and in a way, inevitable – than the possibility of a collision of a wandering space rock with our planet.
It’s been the object of both science and fiction to imagine space missions to divert these civilization-killers from their collision courses.
And, as it turns out, a first experimental mission has been successful in doing so.
☄️ Four years ago, NASA purposely smashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid to see if they could deflect it — a test to prove humanity could protect Earth from threatening space rocks. New research out Friday says the experiment pushed the moonlet asteroid slightly off course…pic.twitter.com/5kraEEvhY8
— AFP News Agency (@AFP)March 6, 2026
“It’s the first time that a celestial body’s orbit around the sun was deliberately changed. The asteroid that NASA’s Dart spacecraft slammed into was never a threat to Earth.
‘This study marks a notable step forward in our ability to prevent future asteroid impacts on Earth’, the international research team wrote in Science Advances.
The changes were slight — reductions of just one-tenth of a second and one-half of a mile (720 meters) to a solar lap spanning two years and hundreds of millions of miles (kilometers), according to the scientists.”
This isn’t science fiction. A NASA mission successfully changed the orbit of an asteroid system.https://t.co/MJzqi7qRlK
Source: The Gateway Pundit
