Double Asteroid Redirection Test

DART

Mission Profile

DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was NASA's planetary defense technology demonstration mission, launched on 24 November 2021 aboard a Falcon 9 to deliberately impact the moonlet Dimorphos orbiting the asteroid Didymos on 26 September 2022. The 610 kg spacecraft struck Dimorphos at 6.1 km/s, successfully altering its orbital period by 33 minutes — more than 25 times greater than the minimum change required to consider the test successful — demonstrating that a kinetic impactor can meaningfully deflect an asteroid. The European Hera mission will visit the Didymos system in 2026 to conduct detailed post-impact characterization of the crater and measure the mass change and momentum transfer efficiency. DART marked humanity's first demonstration of a planetary defense technique, providing the first experimental data on how to protect Earth from a potential future asteroid impact.