{"id":3686,"date":"2026-03-10T13:01:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=3686"},"modified":"2026-03-11T15:27:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T09:57:51","slug":"what-is-the-dart-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-the-dart-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"DART Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>DART Mission Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A groundbreaking study has revealed that NASA\u2019s DART Mission not only altered the motion of a small asteroid within its system but also slightly changed the orbit of the entire asteroid pair around the Sun.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About DART Mission<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DART (<\/span><b>Double Asteroid Redirection Test)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was a <\/span><b>NASA space probe<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of <\/span><b>asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid\u2019s motion<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in space through <\/span><b>kinetic impact.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>launched <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on November 24, <\/span><b>2021<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was the<\/span><b> first-ever space mission <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to demonstrate <\/span><b>asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was the <\/span><b>world\u2019s first planetary defense technology demonstration.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was aimed at finding out whether or not we could <\/span><b>redirect the trajectory of a near-Earth object <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">simply by <\/span><b>crashing into it.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>target <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of DART was a<\/span><b> binary asteroid system<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> consisting of a <\/span><b>smaller moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">around a <\/span><b>larger asteroid, Didymos.<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because the two were <\/span><b>linked by gravity, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b>theory went, knocking<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> little <\/span><b>Dimorphos off-kilter would affect both objects.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DART spacecraft<\/span><b> successfully collided with Dimorphos<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on 26 September <\/span><b>2022<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weighing in at over 1,000 pounds, the spacecraft\u2019s collision with Dimorphos was as energetic as an explosion of over three tons of TNT.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DART\u2019s collision <\/span><b>shortened the orbit<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the <\/span><b>asteroid by around 33 minutes.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The collision <\/span><b>also slightly altered the orbit of the Didymos system around the Sun.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers found that the <\/span><b>solar orbital period changed<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by about 0.15 seconds.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mission was a success.<\/span><b> For the first time,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> humans have successfully <\/span><b>demonstrated <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the <\/span><b>ability to change the motion of an asteroid <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in space.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.moneycontrol.com\/science\/nasa-s-dart-mission-changed-an-asteroid-system-s-orbit-around-the-sun-scientists-revealed-how-article-13853985.html\/amp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DART Mission was the first-ever space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor. Read more about DART Mission, Objective, Features, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":92010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3102,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-3686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-dart-mission","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91992,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686\/revisions\/91992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}