Maybe We Won’t End Up Like the Dinosaurs
NASA has taken a major step toward protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.
The space probe came barreling in at thousands of miles per hour, its mechanical eyes locked on its target—an asteroid named Dimorphos.
About an hour out, the asteroid looked to the probe’s cameras like nothing more than a faint speck in the darkness of space, slightly larger than a single pixel on your screen. A few minutes out, it began to look distinctly asteroid-like, lumpy and gray. Three seconds out, the asteroid filled the whole view—bright and beautiful, the landscape so rich with texture that you could almost feel the craggy rock against your fingertips.
And then, nothing. The spacecraft crashed into
