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byAhmad Lutfi –
editorAhmad Luthfi
Jul 24, 2023
Technologue.id, Jakarta – NASA, the United States space agency has a space mission involving a Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) aircraft. The craft crashes into an asteroid called Dimorphos and changes its orbital trajectory.
Quoted from Techspot, scientists continued their investigation after the DART collision with Dimorphos. After confirming human ability to deflect potentially dangerous targets with sufficient anticipation and resources, researchers are now studying the special effects of DART impacts on asteroids.
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Another study on the DART mission was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The study examines space images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, focusing on the ejecta generated from the DART probe’s impact on the asteroid Dimorphos.
This impact resulted in the release of a visible “long tail” of debris, suggesting a critical role in achieving the higher-than-expected deflection results.
Images taken by Hubble now reveal “vast populations” of boulders moving around multiple asteroid systems. The largest rock is about 7 meters in diameter and has an estimated geometric albedo of 0.15.
Hubble identified a total of 37 boulders, with a combined mass of about 0.1 percent the mass of Dimorphos before the impact.
The rocks orbit Dimorphos and the larger asteroid Didymos. As a result, they will eventually leave the asteroid and head to outer space.
In order to observe the roughly 40 orbiting boulders, scientists had to capture multiple long-exposure images of the tail-like phenomenon left by the impact.
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The study estimated that the 40 boulders that were ejected covered about two percent of the asteroid’s entire surface, the equivalent of a 50-meter crater. Dimorphos’ surface is likely highly porous, limiting the seismic energy generated by DART from penetrating deep into the asteroid’s interior.
Studying asteroid impacts from a distance can be a challenging speculative exercise for scientists. The DART mission became the starting point for the European Space Agency’s HERA mission. The probe is scheduled to launch in October 2024, and will begin orbiting the multiple asteroid system in 2026.
#Nasa #Asteroid #NASADart
2023-07-24 04:32:11
#Scientists #Study #Effects #Asteroid #Collisions #NASAs #Dart #Mission
According to original publication, the average velocity of the boulders, positioned around the parent body, was only about 30 cm per second. These results are consistent with the suggestion that relatively large fragments of asteroid Dimorphos, which ejected obliquely to the asteroid surface at even lower speeds (close to the first cosmic speed, which is estimated to be about 5 cm per second) could have formed a “satellite cloud”. This cloud, in turn, led to the photometrically observed asymmetric “bulge without expansion” of the asteroid image, which is equivalent to the apparent increase in its size after the impact almost doubled. This is quite enough for a false conclusion about the change in its orbit based on the observations of the mutual eclipses of Dimorphos and Didymos shortly after the impact. It is surprising that experienced authors did not pay attention to this possibility and evaluate the behavior of the ejection only for the departure of boulders in the direction perpendicular to the asteroid surface, which must obviously be a minority in the observed ejection almost within the hemisphere. For a more detailed exposition, look for my commentary on the asteroidday.org March 21st post.
So, it is possible that HERA, launched in a couple of years, will see the boulder satellites against the background of the Dimorphos`s surface. Or maybe partially instead of its surface, if the set of orbiting around him boulders remains enough compact and optically dense…