CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An asteroid that NASA used for target practice a few years ago was nudged into a slightly different route around the sun, findings that could help divert a future incoming killer space rock, scientists reported Friday.
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.
“Even though this seems small, a tiny deflection … can add up over decades and make the difference between a potentially hazardous asteroid hitting or missing the Earth in the future,” lead author Rahil Makadia, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said in an email.