NASA made history on Monday by crashing a ship into an asteroid at full speed in an attempt to deflect its orbit; this is a vital test for the future Earth to defend itself from dangerous space objects.

At 19:14 local time in the eastern United States (23:14 GMT), the ship, known as DART (English “dart”), crashed on the surface of the asteroid Dimorphos at approximately 6.4 kilometers per second. 11 million kilometers from Earth.

While the effect can be seen in NASA’s live broadcast, scientists will have to wait days or even weeks to see if the unmanned spacecraft changes the asteroid’s trajectory slightly.

A new era for humanity

For the first time in human history, an attempt has been made to alter the orbit of a celestial body to protect Earth from asteroids similar to the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

It’s also the first “planetary defense” test conducted by NASA in the context of the U.S. Armed Forces’ growing emphasis on space and potential threats to space.

Shortly after launch, Lori Glaze, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said the world had turned a new leaf tonight.

“We are beginning a new era for humanity, one in which we will have the ability to protect ourselves from something as dangerous as an asteroid impact. This is incredible. We’ve never had this capability before,” Glaze said in a statement.

NASA live-streamed the impact in a black-and-white video where the small probe can be seen hitting the asteroid.

At the same time, viewers were able to follow the countdown for effect: “Three, two, one!” And at that moment, they could see how the scientists from NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (LFA) working together on this mission began to clap, clap, and hug.

A ship the size of a refrigerator

Dubbed the DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Orientation Test, the unmanned ship making this historic voyage is about the same size as a refrigerator or food vending machine, and cost more than $330 million to build.

For its part, the asteroid it hit is called Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”). A space object 160 kilometers in diameter, similar to the moon, 780 kilometers in diameter, orbiting a larger asteroid named Didymos, meaning “twin” in Greek.

Together, they are part of what is known as the double asteroid system and were chosen by NASA because they pose no threat to Earth.

NASA scientists believe the DART impact on Dimorphos may have caused a crater and hurled small rocky chunks into space.

A small satellite developed by the Italian Space Agency followed the operation from afar and took images of the impact and sent it to scientists for evaluation in the next hours or days.

a movie mission

NASA administrator Bill Nelson explained the purpose of the test on Twitter, comparing it to the sci-fi movie Armageddon, in which Bruce Willis’ character is part of a mission to destroy an asteroid dangerously close to Earth.

“No, this is not a movie script,” Nelson said in a Twitter message before the accident, emphasizing the mission’s value to Earth’s future survival.

The biggest difference between Armageddon and NASA’s mission was that in this case, the goal was to slightly change the asteroid’s trajectory and not destroy it. A strong impact could result in disaster, with hundreds of space rocks falling to Earth.

For now, there are no objects on NASA’s radar that could pose a direct threat to Earth for the next 100 years, but it has decided to test its technology to prepare.