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.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, rammed into the tiny asteroid at about 22,500 kilometers per hour on September 26 (SN: 9/26/22). The goal was to move Dimorphos slightly closer to the larger asteroid it orbits, Didymos.
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