NASA DART mission: why was a spacecraft flown into an asteroid and was the mission a success?

NASA has successfully flown its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) into its asteroid target, in what was the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.

The target was the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 metres) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-metre) asteroid called Didymos.

NASA confirmed that neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.

Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT, roughly 12.14am UK time.

Following the successful mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: “At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defence, but it is also a mission