NASA confirms DART mission succeeded in altering targeted asteroid’s trajectory

NASA chief Bill Nelson announced on Tuesday that the spacecraft the agency deliberately crashed into an asteroid last month succeeded in nudging the rocky moonlet out of its natural orbit — the first time humanity has altered the motion of a celestial body. Scientists had predicted that the DART impact would shorten the orbital path of the targeted asteroid by at least 10 minutes but said they would have considered a change as little as 73 seconds a success.