A groundbreaking study has revealed that NASA’s DART Mission not only altered the motion of a small asteroid within its system but also slightly changed the orbit of the entire asteroid pair around the Sun.
About DART Mission:
DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was a NASA space probe dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.
It was launched in 2021.
It was the first-ever space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor.
It was the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration.
It was aimed at finding out whether or not we could redirect the trajectory of a near-Earth object simply by crashing into it.
The target of DART was a binary asteroid system consisting of a smaller moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting around a larger asteroid, Didymos.
Because the two were linked by gravity, the theory went, knocking little Dimorphos off-kilter would affect both objects.
DART spacecraft successfully collided with Dimorphos in 2022.
The mission was a success. For the first time, humans have successfully demonstrated the ability to change the motion of an asteroid in space.
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