“NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully deflects asteroid in ground-breaking mission: New insights revealed”

Latest News, International – This incredible image of the swirling dust cloud that was produced when NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft hit an asteroid has been revealed.

Reported from Dailymail.co.uk on April 13, the refrigerator-sized spacecraft collided with a 520-foot (160m) wide space rock known as Dimorphos on September 26 last year.

The goal of the mission is to demonstrate that the technology can deflect asteroids that could harm Earth in the future.

This month, it was revealed that DART cut 33 minutes from Dimorphos’ orbit almost five times more than expected and it was considered a success.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh study the aftermath of the impact, including what was in the debris it left behind and how it clumped together over time.

“Asteroids are some of the most basic relics from which all the planets and moons in our Solar System were created,” said PhD student Brian Murphy.

The dust cloud left after DART shot into Dimorphos at 14,000 mph (22,000 kph) can tell us a lot about what happened when our Solar System formed.

It could also provide more information about the asteroid’s chemical composition.

Astronomer Dr Cyrielle Opitom added: “An impact between asteroids happens naturally, but you never know about it.”

“DART is a really good opportunity to study controlled impacts, almost like in a laboratory.”

The team used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe the DART mission that lasted 7 million miles (11 million km).

For their study, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, they observed the resulting debris over a month using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the VLT in Chile.

They found that, immediately after impact, the dust appeared blue, indicating that the dust was composed of very fine particles.

But over time, these particles began to coalesce and form clumps, spirals and long tails that point away from the Sun’s radiation.

The tails and spirals appear redder than the original dust cloud, indicating that they are composed of larger particles.

MUSE also allows scientists to study the chemical composition of Dimorphos from the dust it ejects.

This is because certain wavelengths of sunlight are reflected by certain molecules, such as water (H₂O) and oxygen (O₂), making their identification possible.

These two molecules in particular would be an indication of the presence of ice within the asteroid, but could not be found.

“Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting traces of water would be a real surprise,” said Dr Opitom.

They also searched for traces of propellant from the DART spacecraft, but none were found.

Dr Opitom added: “We know it is a long shot, because the amount of gas left in the tank from the propulsion system will not be large.”

“Also, some of these will travel too far to detect with MUSE when we start observing.”

Another team from the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium used other VLT instruments to study what impact this had on the asteroid’s surface.

When objects in space reflect sunlight, partially polarizing it, meaning the waves change from oscillating in many different directions to only one.

For their study, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers used a FOcal Reducer/Low Dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) to observe the polarization of light reflected by Dimorphos.

“Tracking how the polarization changes with the orientation of the asteroid relative to us and the Sun reveals the structure and composition of its surface,” said study author Dr Stefano Bagnulo.

They found that the light reflected by the asteroid’s surface became less polarized, and thus more randomly oriented, immediately after the collision.

They suggest that this is due to revealing an untouched material with a more symmetrical, less polarized, molecular structure.

The asteroid also reflects more light after the impact, indicating this inner material is smoother than the rough outer.

The fact that the inside has a finer texture and a more ordered molecular structure than the outside may be due to the fact that it is not exposed to solar wind and radiation.

Another possibility is that DART actually destroyed the top layer of Dimorphos, leading to the production of fine dust particles.

“We know that under certain circumstances, smaller fragments are more efficient at reflecting light and less efficient at polarizing it,” said PhD student Zuri Gray.

Dr Optiom added: ‘This research takes advantage of the unique opportunity when NASA hits an asteroid, such that it cannot be repeated by any future facility.

“This makes the data obtained with the VLT around the time of the impact invaluable for better understanding the nature of asteroids.”