In September 2022, NASA deliberately crashed its DART spacecraft into a small asteroid some 6.8 million miles from Earth, in an attempt to redirect its trajectory as a test-run for any future rock that might threaten Earth.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a winner of the 2023 Gizmodo Science Fair for crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid and altering its orbit, in a pioneering test of planetary defense.