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NASA hit multiple big targets this year—releasing the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope in July, sending an uncrewed Artemis I crew vehicle on a monthlong test trip around the Moon in November. It also scored a literal bullseye hit on Dimorphos, a rocky “moonlet” orbiting the asteroid Didymos, some 6.8 million miles from Earth.
On September 26, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) —a collaboration between NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, with launch help from SpaceX—intentionally crashed a box-shaped spacecraft about the size of a refrigerator into Dimorphos, successfully changing its trajectory and shortening its orbit period by about 32 minutes. While Dimorphos and Didymos are never a threat to Earth—they were chosen more than a decade ago by APL scientists because the proximity of the two asteroids makes it relatively easy to determine the effect that spacecraft impact would have on Dimorphos’ orbit—the mission was intended to mimic what could be done if an asteroid heading toward Earth were discovered.
“This is the first time humankind has actually changed the trajectory of a natural body in space,” says Lindley Johnson, NASA’s first planetary defense officer. Johnson heads the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, part of NASA’s Planetary Science division, tasked with detecting and planning a response to potentially hazardous near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets. “So it’s a milestone not only for planetary defense, but for humans reaching and exploring the solar system.”
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