NASA’s experiment to deflect the Dimorph asteroid with an impact from the DART spacecraft in 2022 led to an unexpected consequence. Rocks that break off from Dimorph as a result of a collision with the probe will fall onto the surface of Mars. But this will happen only after thousands of years, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) have found. The study was published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).
The team analyzed 37 boulders that were separated from the asteroid after contact with DART. The size of the stones ranges from four to seven meters.
As modeling for the next 20 thousand years has shown, four pieces of Dimorpha are highly likely to crash onto Mars. The first pair will crash into the neighboring planet in about 6 thousand years, and the remaining two – after 15 thousand years.
Since Mars does not have a dense atmosphere, meteorites will reach its surface without much interference and leave craters with a diameter of up to 300 meters. This will not be a significant event for the Red Planet, which already has quite a lot of marks from the fall of space rocks. However, today it is unknown what Mars will be like in the next 6-15 thousand years.
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2024-04-14 00:34:58