Nasa crashes spacecraft into asteroid in defence test

A multimillion-dollar spacecraft collided head-on with an asteroid the size of a football stadium on Monday in an unprecedented test of Nasa’s capacity to defend Earth from a doomsday scenario.

Nasa’s craft crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos 11 million km from Earth. The mission, known as Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was an attempt to see if an asteroid hurtling towards our planet could be diverted. The spacecraft collided with the asteroid at 24,000km/h. Live-streamed video showed the asteroid looming into focus before the spacecraft hit.