NASA's DART Mission Slightly Alters Binary Asteroid System's Solar Orbit

NASA's DART mission, which involved crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, has been found to slightly alter the entire binary asteroid system's orbit around the Sun. Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos, and the impact changed their combined solar orbit by a very small but measurable amount. This marks the first time a human-made object has shifted a natural celestial body's solar orbit, highlighting the mission's significance for planetary defense.