On 26 September 2022 NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft crashed at 6 km/s into Dimorphos, a 160-metre moon of the asteroid Didymos, 11 million km from Earth. It was the first demonstration of changing the motion of a celestial body. The impact shortened Dimorphos's orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, far more than the minimum target, partly because of the debris thrown out. The test showed that a kinetic impactor could be used to protect the Earth from a threatening asteroid if there is enough warning.
Before and after
- 16 September 2022Death of Jina Mahsa Amini
- from 16 September 2022 to 1 September 2023Mahsa Amini protests
- 21 September 20222022 Russian mobilization
- from 24 September 2022 to 8 October 2022Operation Rabi' I
- 26 September 2022DART spacecraft deflects an asteroid
- 27 September 20222022 annexation referendums in Russian-occupied Ukraine
- October 2022Luhansk Oblast campaign
- 7 October 2022Release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
- 15 October 2022Soloti military training ground shooting
More in Exploration & discovery
- 1 October 1958NASA is founded
- 18 March 1965Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk
- 1 July 2004Cassini enters orbit around Saturn and Huygens lands on Titan
- 6 August 2012Curiosity lands in Gale crater
- 25 August 2012Voyager 1 enters interstellar space
- 3 January 2019Chang'e 4 lands on the far side of the Moon
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.