NASA’s DART spacecraft changed an asteroid’s orbit around the sun

NASA’s DART spacecraft changed an asteroid’s orbit around the sun Skip to content Subscribe today Every print subscription comes with full digital access Subscribe Now Menu All Topics Health Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology View All Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes View All Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment View All Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics View All Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology View All Magazine Menu All Stories Multimedia Reviews Puzzles Collections Educator Portal Century of Science Unsung characters Coronavirus Outbreak Newsletters Investors Lab About SN Explores Our Store SIGN IN Donate Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 SIGN IN Search Open search Close search Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 All Topics Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology Tech Computing Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Math Science & Society All Topics Health Humans Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Recent posts in Humans Neuroscience The right sounds may turn sleep into a problem-solving tool By Bethany BrookshireMarch 3, 2026 Health & Medicine Over 40? 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Scientists have now shown that the impact changed the asteroid duo’s orbit around the sun. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL By Lisa Grossman 3 hours ago Share this:Share Share via email (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print A spacecraft slowed the orbit of a pair of asteroids around the sun by more than 10 micrometers per second — the first time human activity has altered the orbit of a celestial object, researchers report March 6 in Science Advances. The experiment could have implications for protecting Earth from future asteroid strikes. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the small asteroid Dimorphos in 2022. The goal was to change Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger sibling, Didymos. Within a month, researchers showed that the impact shortened Dimorphos’ 12-hour orbit by 32 minutes. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. Most of that change came from the impact itself. Some of it came from flying impact debris, which gave Dimorphos a little kick in the opposite direction of its motion. Some of the rocks knocked off of Dimorphos fled the vicinity completely, escaping the gravitational influence of the Dimorphos–Didymos pair, says planetary defense researcher Rahil Makadia of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Those rocky runaways took some momentum away from the duo and changed their joint motion around the sun. To figure out how much that motion was affected, astronomers watched the asteroids pass in front of distant stars, dimming some of the stars’ light like a tiny eclipse. These blinks, called stellar occultations, can be visible from anywhere on Earth and are predictable in advance. “Oftentimes it’s amateur astronomers going out in the middle of nowhere to track Didymos based on predictions,” Makadia says. “There was an observer who drove two days each way into the Australian outback to get these measurements.” Makadia and colleagues gathered 22 such measurements taken from October 2022 to March 2025. Calculating how far off occultation timings were from predictions revealed that the asteroids’ orbit around the sun was about 150 milliseconds slower than before the DART impact. The result could be confirmed later this year, when the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft arrives at Didymos and Dimorphos for follow-up observations. Didymos and Dimorphos are not a threat to Earth, Makadia says, and weren’t before DART. But knowing how a deliberate impact changes one asteroid’s orbit can help make defense plans against another, “in case we need to do a kinetic impact for real.” Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ Citations R. Makadia et al. Direct detection of an asteroid’s heliocentric deflection: The Didymos system after DART. Science Advances. Published March 6, 2026. Doi:10.1126/sciadv.aea4259. About Lisa Grossman E-mail X Lisa Grossman is the astronomy writer. She has a degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a graduate certificate in science writing from University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives in Minneapolis. We are at a critical time and supporting science