NASA defense spacecraft shifts asteroid’s orbit around sun

(NewsNation) — A NASA defense spacecraft altered the pathway of two asteroids’ orbits around the sun, according to a new study.

Research published in Science Advances on Friday revealed NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, knocked an asteroid moonlet, Dimorphos, causing a change in its path, along with nearby asteroid Didymos, after colliding in September 2022.

The 770-day orbital period of the pair around the sun was altered by a fraction of a second, meaning DART is the first man-made object to have shifted the orbit of a naturally occurring entity in space.

“The change in the binary system’s orbital speed was about 11.7 microns per second, or 1.7 inches per hour,” Rahil Makadia, the study’s lead author at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said in a release.

“Over time, such a small change in an asteroid’s motion can make the difference between a hazardous object hitting or missing our planet.”

Prior research showed Dimorphos, the smaller of the asteroids, had decreased its 12-hour orbital period by 33 minutes. According to the new study, the collision with DART changed the orbital period by 0.15 seconds.

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