A NASA spacecraft has rammed an asteroid in an unprecedented test to see if a potentially menacing space rock could be knocked off course.
The galactic grand slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles away Monday.
The Dart spacecraft plowed into the small space rock at 14,000 mph.
Scientists say the impact should have carved out a crater and hurled streams of rocks and dirt into space.
Most importantly, though, scientists are hoping the collision altered the asteroid’s orbit.
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NASA won’t know how much the spacecraft nudged the asteroid for days, possibly weeks.
NASA provided a real-time feed from the DART spacecraft. The video above is a time-lapse showing the final eight minutes, cut down to one minute. The camera sent back one image per second to Earth until the feed cut off at impact.
DART blasted off on the $325 million mission last fall.
The Associated Press and NASA contributed to this story.
