New research on asteroid dust could tell us more about the history of our solar system.
. The spirals and tail were redder than the initial debris cloud, which means they were possibly made with larger particles.
This series of images, taken with the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the evolution of the cloud of debris that was ejected when NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The first image was taken on September 26, 2022, just before the impact, and the last one was taken almost one month later on October 25. The white arrow in each panel marks the direction of the Sun. CREDIT: ESO/Opitom et al.
“Impacts between asteroids happen naturally, but you never know it in advance,” Cyrielle Opitom, study co-author and astronomer from University of Edinburgh, said. “DART is a really great opportunity to study a controlled impact, almost as in a laboratory.” Using MUSE allowed the team to break up light emitted from the impact cloud into a rainbow-like pattern and then search for traces of different gasses. They particularly searched for oxygen and water coming from ice that was exposed by the impact with DART, but did not find either.
“Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any trace of water would have been a real surprise,”They were also not able to detect any traces of the propellant DART used, as there likely wouldn’t have been enough left in the tank from the spacecraft’s propulsion system.
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