Een NASA-ruimtevaartuig heeft maandag een asteroïde met verbijsterende snelheid geramd tijdens een ongekende generale repetitie voor de dag dat een moordende rots de aarde bedreigt.

De galactische slag vond plaats op een ongevaarlijke asteroïde op 11,3 miljoen kilometer afstand, waarbij het ruimtevaartuig genaamd DART met een snelheid van 14.000 mph (22.500 km/u) de ruimterots in ploegde. Wetenschappers verwachtten dat de impact een krater zou uithakken, stromen van rotsen en vuil de ruimte in zou slingeren en, belangrijker nog, de baan van de asteroïde zou veranderen.

"We hebben invloed!" kondigde Elena Adams van Mission Control aan, op en neer springend en haar armen omhoog stekend.

Telescopen over de hele wereld en in de ruimte gericht op hetzelfde punt in de lucht om het spektakel vast te leggen. Hoewel de impact meteen duidelijk was - het radiosignaal van DART stopte abrupt - zal het een paar maanden duren om te bepalen hoeveel het pad van de asteroïde is veranderd.

De missie van 325 miljoen dollar was de eerste poging om de positie van een asteroïde of een ander natuurlijk object in de ruimte te veranderen.

"Voor zover we kunnen nagaan, was onze eerste planetaire verdedigingstest een succes", vertelde Adams later op een persconferentie, de kamer vulde zich met applaus. "Ik denk dat aardbewoners beter moeten slapen. Absoluut, dat zal ik doen."

NASA-beheerder Bill Nelson herinnerde mensen er eerder op de dag via Twitter aan:"Nee, dit is geen filmplot." He added in a prerecorded video:"We've all seen it on movies like "Armageddon," but the real-life stakes are high."

Monday's target:a 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid named Dimorphos. It's a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.

The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.

Launched last November, the vending machine-size DART—short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test—navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft builder and mission manager.

DART's on-board camera, a key part of this smart navigation system, caught sight of Dimorphos barely an hour before impact. "Woo hoo!" exclaimed Adams, a mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins.

With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger and larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion. Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures; it looked like a giant gray lemon, but with boulders and rubble on the surface. The last image froze on the screen as the radio transmission ended.

Flight controllers cheered, hugged one another and exchanged high fives. Their mission complete, the DART team went straight into celebration mode. There was little sorrow over the spacecraft's demise.

"Normally, losing signal from a spacecraft is a very bad thing. But in this case, it was the ideal outcome," said NASA program scientist Tom Statler.

Johns Hopkins scientist Carolyn Ernst said the spacecraft was definitely "kaput," with remnants possibly in the fresh crater or cascading into space with the asteroid's ejected material.

Scientists insisted DART would not shatter Dimorphos. The spacecraft packed a scant 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms), compared with the asteroid's 11 billion pounds (5 billion kilograms). But that should be plenty to shrink its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos.

The impact should pare 10 minutes off that. The anticipated orbital shift of 1% might not sound like much, scientists noted. But they stressed it would amount to a significant change over years.

"Now is when the science starts," said NASA's Lori Glaze, planetary science division director. "Now we're going to see for real how effective we were."

Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth. Multiple impactors might be needed for big space rocks or a combination of impactors and so-called gravity tractors, not-yet-invented devices that would use their own gravity to pull an asteroid into a safer orbit.

"The dinosaurs didn't have a space program to help them know what was coming, but we do," NASA's senior climate adviser Katherine Calvin said, referring to the mass extinction 66 million years ago believed to have been caused by a major asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions or both.

The non-profit B612 Foundation, dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes, has been pushing for impact tests like DART since its founding by astronauts and physicists 20 years ago. Monday's feat aside, the world must do a better job of identifying the countless space rocks lurking out there, warned the foundation's executive director, Ed Lu, a former astronaut.

Significantly less than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 460-foot (140-meter) range have been discovered, according to NASA. And fewer than 1% of the millions of smaller asteroids, capable of widespread injuries, are known.

The Vera Rubin Observatory, nearing completion in Chile by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Energy Department, promises to revolutionize the field of asteroid discovery, Lu noted.

Finding and tracking asteroids, "That's still the name of the game here. That's the thing that has to happen in order to protect the Earth," he said. + Verder verkennen

NASA spacecraft closes in on asteroid for head-on collision

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