News Planetary Science

NASA’s DART spacecraft changed an asteroid’s orbit around the sun

Studying this asteroid could help protect Earth from future asteroid strikes

A large grey space rock looms bottom left on a black background. A smaller one hovers at the top and center of the image.

NASA’s DART spacecraft took this picture of asteroid Didymos (bottom left) and its smaller companion Dimorphos about 2.5 minutes before deliberately crashing into Dimorphos. Scientists have now shown that the impact changed the asteroid duo’s orbit around the sun.

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

By Lisa Grossman

A spacecraft slowed the orbit of a pair of asteroids around the sun by more than 10 micrometers per second — the first time human activity has altered the orbit of a celestial object, researchers report March 6 in Science Advances.