Double Asteroid Redirection Test

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was a NASA space mission for planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). It was made to see how much an average-sized spacecraft could move an asteroid out of its trajectory (the path it is guessed to travel.)^[1] The asteroid that was picked was not dangerous to Earth, and also it is a simple binary system. The spacecraft flew on the 24th of November 2021, and hit what it was aiming for, the asteroid Dimorphos.

An Artist's view of the spacecraft right next to Didymos

DART was a joint project between NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

The DART spacecraft was successfully launched on 24 November 2021, with collision aimed for 26 September 2022 to 2 October 2022.^[2][3]