DART Mission

Scientists have recently released the observations made during the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

About the DART Mission –

• NASA’s DART mission was a spacecraft designed to test a method of deflecting an asteroid for planetary defence, using the “kinetic impactor” technique (in simplest terms means smashing a thing into another thing).
• DART was the first-ever space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor.
• The target of the spacecraft was a 160-meter-wide asteroid known as Dimorphos, which is a moonlet in orbit around the larger asteroid, Didymos.
• It was launched in November 2021.
• DART spacecraft successfully collided with Dimorphos on 26 September 2022, altering the asteroid’s orbit by 33 minutes.
• It is the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space.