Maryland scientists monitor progress of first-of-its-kind asteroid-killer technology
BALTIMORE -- A team of scientists in Maryland guided NASA's latest historic mission on Monday.
That's when NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose as part of its Double Asteroid Re-Direction Test, more commonly known as DART.
It's the world's first planetary defense test mission.
The asteroid, named Dimorphos, cruised in at 4,000 miles per hour.
After 10 months of flying in space, DART collided with it.
Scientist Carolyn Ernst had a front-row seat to history inside the mission's operation center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab in Laurel, Maryland.
"It was a huge effort across the U.S., across Maryland, and across the world," she said.
Ernst said described the successful mission as "surreal."
"We've been working on this so long in anticipation," she said.
Although there is no threat of an asteroid plummeting into the Earth at this moment, and possibly no threat for the next few decades, scientists want to be prepared for the unknown future, Ernst said.
In a couple of months, the government agency will know for certain whether the multi-million dollar experiment worked back to you.