What Kind of an Impact did DART Have on Dimorphos? The Science Results are Here universetoday storybywill
“What we can learn from the DART mission is all part of a NASA’s overarching work to understand asteroids and other small bodies in our Solar System. Impacting the asteroid was just the start. Now we use the observations to study what these bodies are made of and how they were formed – as well as how to defend our planet should there ever be an asteroid headed our way.
Based on observations before and after, the team learned that Dimorphos and Didymos have very similar compositions. Both are composed of chondrite, rocky material that formed from dust and small grains in the early Solar System, the same material found in the most common type of meteorite to impact Earth. These measurements also incorporated telescope images of the ejecta, which accounted for the majority of reflected sunlight by the double-asteroid in the days following the impact.
The last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA’s DART mission 2 seconds before impact. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL Scientists also estimate that DART’s impact displaced over a thousand metric tons of chondrite rock into space – about the same weight as a cargo ship. This data was combined with new information on the moonlet’s composition and the ejecta’s characteristics.
The DART test proved that the kinetic impact technique has the potential to divert an asteroid on approach to Earth. The task now is to apply this knowledge so that future asteroid defense spacecraft can be built and the technique tested further. The success of these tests could mean the difference between the continued safety of all life on Earth and a massive impact that causes mass extinction someday.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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