Why the probe threw the asteroid moon Dimorphos so much off course
Detailed data published
“Dart” mission: why the probe threw the asteroid moon Dimorphos so much off course
Image of NASA’s “Dart” spacecraft and the “LICIACube” (bottom right corner) of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) before impact.
© Source: Steve Gribben/NASA/Johns Hopkins
Mankind can defend itself against dangerous asteroids. This is the main result of the mission “Dart”: On September 26 last year, the 570-kilogram probe hit the asteroid moon Dimorphos – and changed its orbit as hoped. And much stronger than expected, as the US space agency Nasa announced a few days later.
The research teams involved are now publishing in the journal “Nature” detailed observations and analysis of the “dart” impact – and provide an explanation for the surprisingly large change in Dimorphos’ orbit.
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“Dart” – the abbreviation stands for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” – set off on November 24, 2021 for the 780-meter-long asteroid Didymos. The small celestial body orbits the sun close to the earth’s orbit and is therefore easily accessible for space probes.
Orbit changed more than expected
More importantly, however, Didymus has a 160 meter moon with Dimorphos. And the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos could be precisely measured both before and after the impact of “Dart”. For a single asteroid, it would not have been possible to determine the effect of the collision with such great accuracy. On September 26, 2022, the time had come: “Dart” hit the asteroid moon as planned at a speed of almost 24,000 kilometers per hour.
“The impact of ‘Dart’ was surprisingly effective in deflecting the trajectory of Dimorphos,” write Andrew Cheng of Johns Hopkins University in College Park, Maryland, and his colleagues. The speed of the small moon has decreased by about ten meters per hour as a result of the impact. That sounds like little, but it resulted in a significant change in orbit, bringing the moon closer to Didymos. This shortened its orbital period of almost twelve hours by 33 minutes. The researchers had expected a change of no more than ten minutes, even under optimistic conditions.
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This October 8, 2022 NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after NASA’s DART spacecraft deliberately impacted the asteroid on September 26. The shape of this tail has changed over time. Researchers continue to study this material and how it moves in space to better understand the asteroid.
© Source: NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble
Accurate reconstruction of the impact
Using numerous telescopes on Earth and in space, the scientists observed not only the orbit of Dimorphos, but also the emission of a debris cloud triggered by the collision, which quickly spread out into space. In addition to the Hubble space telescope, many hobby astronomers around the world took part in these measurements. On its website, Nasa many videos and photos about the “Dart” mission collected.
Altogether, Ariel Graykowski from the Seti Institute in Mountain View (US state of California) and her colleagues estimate based on this data that Dimorphos ejected at least 0.3 to 0.5 percent of its mass into space – that is about 12,000 tons of rock .
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Why were mammals able to survive after the asteroid impact – and dinosaurs not?
For a long time, researchers were primarily interested in dinosaurs – although mammals also lived 200 million years ago. Some of them were even predators of the giant lizards. In an RND interview, paleontologist Steve Brusatte explains why mammals, unlike dinosaurs, survived the devastating asteroid impact.
In addition to these observations, Terik Daly of Johns Hopkins University and his team are providing an accurate reconstruction of the impact using the images back-to-earth from Dart. The impact occurred between two large boulders on the surface, one of which the probe touched immediately before impact. Taken together, the data and analysis show that it was the recoil of the matter thrown into space by the impact that caused the astonishingly large change in orbit.
repel asteroids in the future
“This ejection contributes significantly more to the change in orbit than the actual impact,” Cheng and his colleagues summarize. And this knowledge is of considerable importance should an asteroid actually be on a collision course with Earth.
However, the effect of a targeted impact also depends on what a celestial body consists of and how it is structured. Therefore, the European space agency Esa, in cooperation with NASA, is planning to send another space probe into the Didymos Dimorphos system.
The mission called “Hera”. is scheduled to start in October 2024 and will take a close look at the asteroid moon and in particular the impact crater of “Dart” with numerous instruments and two small nanosatellites.
