The asteroid NASA smashed into may still be slowing down - Interesting Engineering

An artist's impression of the DART mission.

NASA 

In October of last year, NASA declared the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which successfully redirected an asteroid’s trajectory by deliberately crashing in it with a spacecraft, a success.

"As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success," said at the time Elena Adams, DART's mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL). "I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will."

Changing paths

The DART spacecraft collided with the target asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2020 but researchers, who had been meticulously analyzing and monitoring the celestial body's course, only announced the mission's success on October 11, 2022 when they were able to report that the spacecraft had considerably changed the asteroid's path in space.

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