From Impact to Innovation: A Year of Science and Triumph for Historic DART Mission

Last fall, the world watched as the DART spacecraft — the Double Asteroid Redirection Test — guided itself toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a direct collision, a major technical achievement and the first successful planetary defense test in history. DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 490 feet (150 meters) in diameter, which orbits a larger, 2,500-foot (760-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth, but the system proved to be the perfect target for the experimental mission.

As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrated a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid, if one were discovered. Revisit DART’s triumphant collision with Dimorphos and the resulting year of science analysis and discoveries that followed.