After flying in space for 10 months, a NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid on Tuesday, September 27,   in a first-of-its-kind mission to test whether space rocks that might threaten Earth in the future could be nudged safely out of the way, the US space agency said. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration — targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 160 m in diameter. Dimorphos orbits a larger 780-m asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth. The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact, the agency said. “Dart represents an unprecedented success for planetary defence, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that Dart’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos.