News Planetary Science

NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid

The orbital change was even bigger than scientists expected

A blue split stream of dust and rock wafting off the asteroid Dimorphos seen after the DART spacecraft mission

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a split stream of dust and rock streaming off the asteroid Dimorphos nearly 12 days after the DART spacecraft smashed into it.

NASA, ESA, STScI, Hubble

By Lisa Grossman

It worked! Humanity has, for the first time, purposely moved a celestial object.

As a test of a potential asteroid-deflection scheme, NASA’s DART spacecraft shortened the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos by 32 minutes — a far greater change than astronomers expected.