NASA’s DART mission successfully demonstrated that a kinetic impact can alter not just a moonlet’s orbit but the trajectory of an entire binary asteroid system.

By crashing into Dimorphos, the smaller companion of Didymos, the spacecraft reduced its orbit around the larger asteroid by 33 minutes and nudged the system’s heliocentric velocity by about 11.7 micrometers per second.

The effect was amplified by debris ejected from Dimorphos, which acted like a secondary “rocket thrust,” roughly doubling the momentum transferred.

Analysis revealed that Didymos is relatively solid, while Dimorphos is a loosely bound “rubble pile,” formed from material shed as Didymos spun rapidly over billions of years, Ars Technica has reported.

Overall, DART confirms that kinetic impacts are a viable planetary defense strategy, and upcoming ESA missions like Hera will provide further detailed measurements to refine these findings.