To be clear, this was only a test of one potential defense method, called "deflection by kinetic impactor," that doesn't require nuclear weapons or celebrities on a suicide mission a la popular Hollywood movies like 1998's Armageddon.DART's impact with Dimorphos on Sept. 26 appears to have reduced the time it takes the moonlet to orbit Didymos by 32 minutes, from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes, with a margin of uncertainty of about two minutes."It looks like the recoil from the ejecta blasted off the surface was a substantial contributor to the overall push given to the asteroid, in addition to the push of the spacecraft directly impacting," said Tom Statler, DART program scientist at NASA headquarters.Numerous images taken in the days that followed the impact by telescopes in space and on Earth showed that the ejecta was forming a tail trailing Dimorphos similar to what we see with comets orbiting the sun."It just gave it a small nudge, but if you wanted to do this in the future, it could potentially work but you'd want to do it years in advance."