NASA's asteroid deflection mission made headlines for its success—but what scientists discovered in the aftermath stunned them. Hidden forces, explosive debris, and an unexpected twist may have changed everything we thought we knew about planetary defense.
In September 2022, NASA slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid moonlet called Dimorphos at more than 14,000 miles per hour (22,530.8 km/h). The impact was deliberate. The mission, known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), was designed to t... [4896 chars]