Science, Discovery, Tech and Environment · 13 March 2026
NASA DART impact altered orbit of both Dimorphos and Didymos around Sun
Exam-focused facts from the 13 March 2026 current affairs briefing.
Key facts
- NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos at roughly 14,000 mph in September 2022.
- The mission shortened Dimorphos' 12-hour orbit around Didymos by 33 minutes.
- New study published 6 March in Science Advances found Didymos' 770-day solar orbit changed by a fraction of a second.
- NASA stated this marks the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun.
- European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Hera launched 7 October 2024 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and is scheduled to reach the Didymos system by end-2026.
- NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, established in 2016, catalogues near-Earth objects that could crash into Earth.
- NASA's NEO Surveyor telescope, set to launch no earlier than September 2027, is designed to discover 90% of asteroids and comets 460 feet or larger within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit.