NASA
• Naomi Hartono
NASA’s DART impact altered a binary asteroid’s heliocentric orbit — first deliberate change to a body's solar path
New analysis shows NASA’s 2022 DART spacecraft collision with Dimorphos, the moonlet of binary asteroid Didymos, not only shortened Dimorphos’s orbit around its parent but also measurably shifted the pair’s orbit around the Sun — the first intentional alteration of a celestial body's heliocentric trajectory.
