Nasa says Dart mission succeeded in shifting asteroid’s orbit

Space agency attempted first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth's way

A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles from Earth succeeded in shifting the orbit of the space rock, Nasa said on Tuesday, announcing the results of its first such test.

The US space agency strategically launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft into the path of the asteroid, thereby throwing it off course.