DART mission

Why is on news? NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully crashed into asteroid Dimorphos

The Dimorphos, a 160-metre-tall asteroid was successfully crashed by the DART mission of NASA on 26^th September, 2022.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs).

DART was the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid's motion in space through kinetic impact.

It is a vending machine-sized spacecraft launched from Earth in November 2021, the probe impacted the minor-planet moon Dimorphos. The asteroid selected for the test poses no actual threat to Earth.

DART is a joint project between NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

The DART mission intentionally crashed on an asteroid to test a unique defence technology.

The crash is aimed at giving Earth a defence tool against future asteroids headed our way.

The 325 million dollar project was the first attempt to move a natural object in space but it will take days or perhaps weeks to assess how much the asteroid's path was altered.