(Reuters) – The spacecraft that NASA deliberately crashed into an asteroid last month succeeded in nudging the rocky moonlet out of its natural orbit, the first time humanity has altered the motion of a celestial body, NASA’s chief announced on Tuesday.
Findings of telescope observations unveiled at a NASA news briefing showed that the suicide test flight of the DART spacecraft on Sept. 26 achieved its primary objective: changing the direction of an asteroid through sheer kinetic force.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
