'Relief' on a Mid Wales hillside as DART scores a bullseye on asteroid defence mission

Unlike the US space agency which has a multi-million pound budget for things like last week's DART mission, Spaceguard UK relies on its charity shop and donations left in collection pots to fund its cutting edge science projects.

"We are relieved that it worked because it is about creating a planetary defence system that could divert asteroids on a collision course with Earth," said Jay Tate, director of Spaceguard UK, which keeps a watchful eye on the skies from its remote hilltop site near Knighton, in Powys.

"It is not just science it's defence. This was the first official defence test aimed at deflecting a near earth object off its course.

"We have hit a comet before with the Deep Impact mission, which was about finding out what comets are made of, but that was not to try to deflect it."

Mr Tate praised the mission for hitting its 160-metre diameter target, which is about 6.8 million miles from earth. DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits a larger, 780-metre asteroid called Didymos. NASA says neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.

"It will take a few weeks to see what the results are," said Mr Tate, who was encouraged by a video that showed debris flying into space after the impact.

Very few of the billions of asteroids and comets orbiting our Sun are potentially hazardous to Earth, and, for at least the next century, no known asteroid threatens our planet.

But Mr Tate said about 95-96 per cent of dinosaur extinction-sized objects have been identified, but fewer than 20 per cent of smaller ones that could destroy a small country or city have been tracked.

Spaceguard's role is to keep an eye on the near Earth objects once they have been spotted by the well-funded research programmes.

The centre has the biggest telescope in Wales but Mr Tate casts envious eyes at the multiplying budgets of his space colleagues across the pond.

"We receive no external funds," he said. "The UK is a complete non-player in this. The science is very clear on the issue but it is politicians who hold the purse strings. It is a long-term project but politicians only think short term."

NASA was also happy with the direct hit.

“At its core, 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.

“As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect 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 investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos.

Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about one per cent, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test.