The Double Asteroid Redirection Test aimed to alter the orbit of the house rock Dimorphos, and it did so completely
Space
14 December 2022
Dimorphos and the bigger Didymos as they appeared after the DART crash ASI/NASA
On 26 September, after travelling 11 million kilometres from Earth in 9 months, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) craft slammed into the house rock Dimorphos. The objective was to see if we may change an asteroid’s path by flying a probe into it – and it was an unmitigated success.
Dimorphos is a small moonlet that orbits a bigger asteroid known as Didymos. Before the impression, Dimorphos circled Didymos as soon as each 11 hours and 55 minutes. The crash moved it barely nearer and now an orbit takes solely 11 hours and 23 minutes.
Images taken after the crash confirmed big clouds of mud and particles blasted off the smaller asteroid, making a recoil impact that pushed it nearer to Didymos than if the impression hadn’t resulted on this particles.
While Dimorphos and Didymos pose no hazard to Earth, this success demonstrates that if we had been to identify an asteroid heading our means, crashing a spacecraft into it’d shift its trajectory by simply sufficient to make it miss Earth.
Figuring out precisely what occurred inside the asteroid when DART hit it can assist us design these potential future missions to maintain our planet as secure as potential.
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