DART, Dimorphos
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft was doomed from the start—its creators designed it to smash into an asteroid. The DART mission, completed in September 2022, aimed to find out if humankind could change the trajectory of an Earth-threatening asteroid, should the need ever arise in the future. DART passed with flying colors; the spacecraft collided with a small (non-threatening) moonlet named Dimorphos about 6.8 million miles from Earth. Above is the last complete image sent by DART, showing a 100-foot-wide swathe of Dimorphos about 2 seconds before impact. Below is the last image from DART; it’s incomplete because DART collided with the asteroid as the image was being transmitted to Earth. Scientists later determined that the asteroid’s orbit had changed by 32 minutes—a resounding success.
