NASA’s DART Mission Successfully Moved a Stadium-Sized Asteroid’s Orbit
Someday an asteroid might threaten Earth. In preparation for that day, NASA has been strategizing how to deflect incoming celestial bodies. This plan for planetary defense was recently tested for the first time when the DART mission's spacecraft collided intentionally with a small asteroid named Dimorphos which currently poses no danger to us. The results are now in: the collision shortened the period of Dimorphos' orbit.