NASA’s DART spacecraft changed a binary asteroid’s orbit around the sun, in a first for a human-made object

<2> NASA’s DART Spacecraft Alters Binary Asteroid’s Orbit Around the Sun
<3> A Historic Achievement in Space Exploration
<>When NASA crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in 2022, it altered both Dimorphos’ orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos, and the two objects’ orbit around the sun, according to < class="link" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea4259" target="_blank">new research published in the journal Science Advances. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a press release that this "marks the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun." It’s a promising result as scientists work to find a feasible method of defending Earth from hazardous space objects.