What would happen if a gigantic asteroid started hurtling towards Earth?

We all beheaded for impending doom like the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago?

Well, we might not go the way of the dinosaurs after all. Last September,

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART,

a spacecraft the size of a golf cart smashed into a small asteroid called dimorphos.

Actually, altering its trajectory around another asteroid called Digimos in our first-ever

test of planetary defense.

Hailed as a no pun intended smashing success,

no less than five studies in the scientific journal nature get into the nitty gritty

of how exactly our celestial gut punch worked.

This is beautiful to watch.

I'm Tuleka Bowes, our senior multimedia editor at Scientific American.

I'm here with Lee Billings, our senior editor for Space and Physics,

who will try to answer some questions I'm sure we all have.

Hey Lee.

Hey Tuleka.

Okay, so there's a lot of stuff to sift through.

One of the new studies details how this collision altered the path of dimorphos through space.

Shortening the time it takes to orbit Digimos by 33 minutes.

So Lee, how did this work?

Right, ideally.

And we'll get into actuality in a moment.

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