NASA Confirms DART Mission Changed the Orbit of Dimorphos

Today, NASA announced that the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) has successfully shortened the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos around its parent, Didymos.

On October 11th, 2022, after two weeks of analysis and telescope observations from South Africa and Chile, NASA's data conclusively showed the orbit time of Dimorphos was shortened by 32 minutes.

Prior to the collision, Scientists hoped to shorten the asteroid's orbit by maybe 10 minutes. NASA stated that if they could change the orbit of the targeted asteroid by just 73 seconds, they would consider the DART mission successful.

They surpassed that goal 25 times over.

NASA sent the spacecraft — comparable in size to a vending machine — out to meet its target on November 24th, 2021. When it collided with Dimorphos, it was cruising along at a speed of 14,000 MPH. The asteroid itself was the size of a large football stadium.

With this success, Earth now has a potential strategy in place to protect itself, should another similarly-sized asteroid be detected early enough. NASA's "save the world" test proved that we are more equipped than ever to deflect whatever the universe tries to throw in our direction.

“We showed the world that NASA is a serious defender of this planet,” Bill Nelson said. “It felt like a movie plot, but this was not Hollywood.”

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos posed any threat to us, but they were the perfect test subjects for the DART mission.

Data is still being processed at ground-based observatories the world over — as well as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Goldstone planetary radar in California, and radar facilities at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. They are working to improve the precision of the measurements.

“DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” says Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.”

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory manages the DART mission for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The APL also constructed and operated the pioneering DART spacecraft.

DART used a planetary defense method known as the kinetic impactor technique. This entails launching a spacecraft to collide with an asteroid, purposefully changing its orbit. This would ensure that the asteroid would not be on a path that threatens the Earth.

With today's announcement, it seems this technique could definitely be a plausible planetary defense strategy, should we need to use it in the future.

"A mission like this could save the world," said Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society. "We're celebrating here at The Planetary Society today. The DART mission exceeded its goals, changing the orbit of an asteroid. I’m proud of everyone here, because our members have been advocating for Earth-saving missions like DART for many years — sending emails, petitions, and letters to ensure they don't lose funding. We’re still at it. With this mission's success, it turns out to be time and effort well spent."

Furthermore, a kinetic impact is just one of a few of ways to defend Earth.

If we detect an object early enough, we could launch a spacecraft that would fly alongside it — for just long enough to create a gravity tractor: using the ship's gravitational pull to redirect its orbit.

Another option is nuclear explosives to redirect or obliterate an asteroid.

However, these weapons should definitely be used with caution — and far away from Earth itself — to avoid asteroid pieces endangering us.