NASA’s DART mission successfully changed asteroid’s orbit

The results of the DART mission are very good.

In a historic announcement on Tuesday, the space agency confirmed that for the first time, humanity has succeeded in changing the path of a planetary body, suggesting we now have a way to protect ourselves against hazardous asteroids.

This just in: The #DARTmission impact is confirmed to have changed the orbit of moonlet Dimorphos around its asteroid Didymos.

For the first time ever, humans changed the motion of a celestial object. More details: https://t.co/aQj8N7fnuV pic.twitter.com/NLR6AqEcaO

— NASA (@NASA) October 11, 2022

NASA and its international partners achieved the feat in a test mission last month that involved smashing the refrigerator-sized DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft into the 525-feet-wide Dimorphos asteroid to see if the force of the asteroid's motion could be measured. Almost in real time, the moment of impact was streamed.

Since the impact of the Didymos asteroid on September 26th, telescopes on the ground have been gathering data to see if the impact had any effect on the asteroid's position around Didymos.

According to the investigation team, they were able to confirm that the impact altered Dimorphos' position around Didymos, shortening the time it took for them to arrive. The measurement has a margin of uncertainty of around two minutes.

Prior to the impact, NASA had defined a minimum successful change of Dimorphos as less than 73 seconds.

Bill Nelson said that all of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. The mission shows that NASA is prepared for anything that comes their way. NASA has shown us that we are serious about protecting the planet. The NASA team and partners from around the world have demonstrated their commitment to planetary defense.

The DART mission was built and operated by the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Maryland. The mission team will study the Dimorphos asteroid in order to understand the first planetary defense test involving asteroids.

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