Two weeks following the DART probe collided with the asteroid satellite Dimorphos, NASA officially announced that the DART mission was more perfect than expected, successfully changing the orbit of Dimorphos around the parent asteroid Didymos, shortening the time by up to 32 minutes.
The DART mission is the first defense test technology for actively impacting asteroids in human history, using probes to deliberately hit asteroids at the right time to change their orbits and move them away from paths that might threaten Earth.
Launched last November, the mission, following a 10-month journey, crashed into Dimorphos, one of the asteroids of the binary asteroid system, at 22,530 km/h on September 26 this year. Prior to this, Dimorphos orbited its parent asteroid Didymos in an orbital period of 11 hours and 55 minutes, and any shortening of Dimorphos’ orbit by more than 73 seconds would be considered a success.
▲ The Hubble telescope captures changes in the brightness of the asteroid before and following the impact of the DART probe. (Source:European Space Agency）
Two weeks following the impact, many telescopes have followed Dimorphos, and various measurements have confirmed that Dimorphos’ orbit has been shortened to 11 hours and 23 minutes, or 32 minutes, far exceeding the expected 73 seconds.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said this is a watershed moment in planetary defense technology, proving that humanity is capable and ready to defend Earth in earnest. In the next step, the Hera probe of the European Space Agency will once once more return to the double asteroid system on-site to investigate the consequences, collect close-up data, and look forward to the real transformation of this experimental technology.
(Source of the first image:European Space Agency）
