An uncrewed spacecraft smashed into an asteroid Monday in an effort to deflect the distant space rock, the dramatic climax of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission to test whether the technique could one day be used to protect Earth.
“We’re all just losing our minds right now,” said Harrison Agrusa, a University of Maryland astrophysicist and investigation team member on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, mission.
