The DART mission is the first planetary defense test in history, during which an attempt was made to alter the orbit of an asteroid by colliding it with a spacecraft.

Scientists from the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan – Head of the Laboratory of Galactic Astronomy Otabek Burkhonov and PhD, Senior Researcher Kamoliddin Ergashev – have been awarded NASA’s Group Achievement Award for a historic scientific result achieved as part of the international space mission “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” (DART). The award is regarded as a high form of recognition from NASA.

The mission was carried out on September 26, 2022: the spacecraft delivered a kinetic impact to Dimorphos, the moonlet of the asteroid Didymos, meaning it collided with it. As a result, the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos changed. The most important point is that this change was precisely measured using ground-based and space telescopes. Thus, for the first time in human history, it became possible to artificially alter the orbit of an asteroid and experimentally confirm the result.

According to the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, our scientists took part in the DART mission’s ground-observation working group, using the telescopes of the Maydanak Observatory. Their main task was to determine the change in the asteroid system's orbital period from photometric observations before and after the impact, and to perform precise calculations.

A. Rustamov, UzA