NASA on Monday conducted the first ever mission to intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid.

Watch the video above to see what Elizabeth Gabeler, who was on the team that helped design the Dart spacecraft, had to say about it

The mission was part of a long-term goal of being ready to handle the threat — while not imminent or likely — of a large asteroid hitting Earth. The $325 million mission was the first attempt to shift the position of an asteroid or any other natural object in space.

The galactic grand slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the small space rock at 14,000 mph. Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.

Monday’s target: a 525-foot asteroid named Dimorphos. It’s actually a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.

The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.

Launched last November, the vending machine-size Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft builder and mission manager.

Dart’s on-board camera, a key part of this smart navigation system, caught sight of Dimorphos barely an hour before impact.

When NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft slammed into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos, the impact certainly left a mark.

The intentional collision, which took place Sept. 26 as a test of asteroid deflection technology, displaced more than 2 million pounds of rocks and dust from the asteroid into space. Scientists estimate it was enough material to fill about six or seven rail cars.

The insights gained from the collision are helping scientists learn how this planetary defense technique might be used in the future. That's if an asteroid is ever discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.

Neither Dimorphos, nor the larger asteroid Didymos that it orbits, pose a threat to Earth, but the system made for excellent target practice.

New findings and images from the impact were shared Thursday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in Chicago.

"What we can learn from the DART mission is all part of a NASA's overarching work to understand asteroids and other small bodies in our Solar System," said Tom Statler, program scientist for DART at NASA, in a statement.

"Impacting the asteroid was just the start. Now we use the observations to study what these bodies are made of and how they were formed — as well as how to defend our planet should there ever be an asteroid headed our way."

Images captured by space and ground-based telescopes before and after the impact are helping scientists piece together what happened when the spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos at about 14,000 miles per hour.

The DART team calculated that the transfer of momentum when the spacecraft hit the asteroid was 3.6 times greater than if the asteroid had absorbed the spacecraft and no material was blasted from the surface. The momentum created when Dimorphos' surface material blasted out into space contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did, the researchers said.

"Momentum transfer is one of the most important things we can measure, because it is information we would need to develop an impactor mission to divert a threating asteroid," said Andy Cheng, DART investigation team lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement.

"Understanding how a spacecraft impact will change an asteroid's momentum is key to designing a mitigation strategy for a planetary defense scenario."

The DART mission successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos, marking the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space.

Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit Didymos. Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed the moonlet asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes.

Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.

Asteroid 2023 BU will come within 2,200 miles of the Earth’s surface this evening as it is expected to fly over the tip of South America, according to NASA.

NASA said the asteroid will come well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites.

The small asteroid poses no threat to Earth. Even if it did enter Earth’s atmosphere, the truck-sized asteroid would largely burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The asteroid was just recently discovered. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies was able to quickly determine through its Scout impact hazard assessment system it would pose no threat to Earth.

“Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

An enormous asteroid that is nearly as large as two Empire State Buildings passed safely by Earth on Tuesday astronomers said.

NASA classifies the object as "potentially hazardous," yet the asteroid was always expected to move past our planet safely at 43,754 mph at a distance of 1.2 million miles away from Earth, according to NASA.

While the distance from Earth sounds safe, astronomers still consider it close for an object of its size. Scientists say there is no danger of a collision with Earth but that the object is still classified as having the potential to be hazardous.

NASA JPL

The Virtual Telescope Project, based in Italy's capital city Rome, live-streamed the asteroid, called 7482 (1994 PC1), as it was set to pass Earth. Streaming began live at 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday just before the object was at its closest approach to Earth.

Virtual Telescope Project's founder Gianluca Masi wrote on their livestream page that the "Virtual Telescope Project will show it live online, just at the fly-by time, when it will peak in brightness."

According to Live Science, 7482 (1994 PC1) would make its closest approach to our planet Tuesday at 4:51 p.m. EST.

Watch here:
https://youtu.be/xLrj1xa43pw