NASA spacecraft collided with an asteroid: What happened to the stones flying into space (photo)

The $325 million DART spacecraft mission ended successfully in September 2022, when it deliberately crashed into the surface of the Dimorph asteroid to save humanity. The essence of the mission was simple: it was necessary to push a NASA device onto a space rock and see if its orbit could be changed. So in the future, as scientists hope, it will be possible to save the Earth from all kinds of dangerous asteroids. When the device fell into Dimorph, a stream of debris ranging in size from one millimeter to one meter flew into space. Universe Today writes that the authors of a new paper posted on the arXiv preprint server analyzed the debris flow to predict where it might end up.

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Asteroid Dimorph orbits asteroid Didymus and together they form a binary system. None of the asteroids pose a threat to Earth, but they provided an opportunity to test technology that would protect the planet from a possible impact. In October 2022, NASA announced that the orbit of the asteroid Dimorph had been changed; This means that it is possible to save humanity from a potential disaster with the help of the spacecraft’s kinetic energy.

The DART spacecraft collided with Dimorph at tremendous speed, causing rocks on the asteroid’s surface to fly into space at approximately 2 km/s. This debris was observed by both ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope. It was the LICIACube probe, which separated from the DART instrument shortly before the “space accident”, that also observed the consequences of the impact.

As subsequent observations of scientists showed, the debris flow turned into a cone-shaped formation with a tail. This comet-like tail was then thrown away from the asteroid system due to solar radiation pressure. The mass and speed of the ejected particles were determined using images taken from the ground.

New modeling based on existing data shows that about 3% of all rocks ejected from the asteroid should remain in the binary system’s orbit for 80 days after impact. The scientists also found that about 5% of the 10-cm rocks propagating at speeds of 0.12 m/s and 0.18 m/s are expected to remain in orbit for 60 days.

At the same time, the study found that the huge rocks remained in orbit for between 800 and 1,550 days after the impact, but then their numbers began to decrease. Scientists believe that these huge rocks mostly collided with asteroids Didymus and Dimorph. The simulations did not show that any rock could fly into space and leave the binary system.

According to scientists, closer observations are needed to fully understand the consequences of DART’s collision with an asteroid. And the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft, which will go to Didymos and Dimorphus in a few years, will also help in this regard.

As I already wrote FocusAstronomers have discovered water on the surface of asteroids in the solar system for the first time. It was assumed that all the water on their surfaces should have evaporated long ago.