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“I believe that Nasa has proven that we are serious as a defender of the planet," said NASA administrator Bill Nelson, with no hint of irony.

What is that snarky comment supposed to mean?

Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I think it’s a great technical achievement, despite other goings-on.

Which now is headed straight for Earth

Interestingly enough, this particular asteroid (pair) was chosen partly because the test—whether it succeeded or failed—would cause no threat (given currently available data).

What happened to needing 2 years to determine this?

The detailed inspection by the Hera mission isn’t necessary to determine whether the asteroid’s trajectory was sufficiently altered. But we’ll have more data in a few more years.

Space is so vast (even just within our own "cosmic neighborhood") that accidentally knocking a large rock directly into a collision course with Earth would take (pardon me for this) astronomically bad luck.

The only way I could see us doomsday'ing ourselves this way was if we were too stupid about towing a massive asteroid with lots of metals into orbit around Earth so it would be easier to mine. At least then we were actually trying to get it to go in the direction of Earth.

That sounds like the plot of a satirical movie.

It's actually a one note research anomaly in the space civ game Stellaris.

An unknown alien civilization from thousands of years in the past accidentally wiped itself out by trying to tow a massive asteroid into orbit around their planet where it could be mined for it's rich metal content.

Except they were way off about their calculations and sent it towards the planet too fast. They couldn't stop it in time and it impacted so hard it wiped all life off the planet.

But you get a +3 alloy bonus when you put a mining station over the planet because of it, so that's good for you at least.

Nice. Mine was a weak reference to Don’t Look Up, in case you’re uninterested in pap.

Hadn't had the chance to watch that yet. Will get to it eventually.

I spit my water out, not to stop the asteroid.

Sucks to be the planet they put it in alignment with then.

It's actually a small asteroid orbiting another, bigger asteroid. So, it's an asteroid "moon", basically.

The test moved the smaller one into a slightly closer, faster orbit around its own parent body, which continues on pretty much the same orbit through the solar system as before.

If you hit me with a refrigerator at 14,000 mph, I’d change my path too.

According to the article, they changed the orbital period by 32 minutes... which was 25 times more change than they were expecting... on a rock the size of the Eiffle Tower.

That's wild.

Man, the Earth Defense Plan is moving quicker than we anticipated.

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