… just by war or climate change.
According to NASA, “DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact”. This means NASA has DART collide with an asteroid deliberately to change its speed and path i.e., the orbit.
Launched last year, DART targeted the asteroid system “Didymos” which comprises the asteroid Didymos and another asteroid that orbits it called “Dimorphos”. Neither of these objects posed (or poses) any threat to Earth. DART collided with “Dimorphos” and successfully altered its orbit. Initially, NASA had expected to alter Dimorphos’ orbit by around 10 minutes but ended up shortening the orbit by 32 minutes!…
