2023-07-23 06:00:12
After a NASA-orchestrated collision, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a debris field around the asteroid Dimorphos. This rare spectacle offers us a unique insight into the dynamics and consequences of such an impact.
The light blue dots around the body of the asteroid Dimorphos are all rocks thrown into space during NASA’s DART mission.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA)
Last September, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission probe disintegrated when it hit Dimorphos, altering the asteroid’s trajectory. Astronomers found that the DART’s impact at about 23,400 km/h produced a “rock swarm”. These rocks, 0.9 to 6.7 meters in diameter (In a circle or a sphere, the diameter is a line segment passing through the center…), were probably dislodged from the surface (A surface generally designates the superficial layer of an object. The term a…) of the asteroid during the impact.
“This shows us for the first time what happens when you impact an asteroid: material is ejected, up to the largest sizes,” said David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California (The University of California is an American university, founded in 1868, of which…) in Los Angeles.
The rocks thrown into space during the DART impact are circled in blue.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA)
DART’s goal was to alter Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger partner, the asteroid Didymos, by at least 73 seconds. However, the probe greatly exceeded this objective, modifying the orbit of Dimorphos by 32 minutes (Primary form of a document: Law: a minute is the original of an act. …).
This means that the DART probe, which weighed 550 kg, moved Dimorphos closer to Didymos and shortened the orbital path of the smaller asteroid. This achievement shows the potential of using a similar method to deflect an asteroid from a collision course with Earth.
The boulders, which make up about 0.1% of Dimorphos’ mass, were spotted drifting away from the asteroid at just over 0.8 km/h, or “about the walking speed of a turtle (Turtles (Testudines) [tɔʀty] form an order of reptiles including the …) giant (A giant star is a star of luminosity class II or III. In the …)”, according to NASA.
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