NASA researchers say it will take weeks of observation to confirm asteroid orbital correction
It has been confirmed that the asteroid ‘Dimorphos’, which collided with the NASA’s ‘Double Asteroid Orbital Correction Experiment’ (DART) spacecraft, had a dust tail with a length of more than 10,000 km.
The BBC reported on the 4th (local time) that a joint research team, including the US National Laboratory of Optical and Infrared Astronomy (NOIRLab) and the Lowell Observatory, used the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) in Chile after the DART spacecraft collided with Dimorphus to collect asteroid debris and debris. It is reported that they have caught a tail of more than 10,000 km of dust and other things.
The research team will continue to observe this tail for several weeks to several months, and it is expected that the tail will continue to grow longer and then gradually disperse and disappear like cosmic dust.
The vending machine-sized DART spacecraft, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket at the end of November last year, landed on the asteroid Dymorphus, approximately 11.2 million km from Earth, on the 26th of last month at a speed of 22,530 km/h (6.25 km/s). exactly crashed.
This experiment, which is evaluated as the first Earth defense experiment in human history, is to determine if it is possible to prevent an asteroid from collide with the Earth by changing its orbit by colliding a spaceship with the asteroid if an asteroid that is likely to collide with the Earth is discovered in the future. will be.
Scientists are using various astronomical observatories to observe the asteroid to see if the impact has changed the orbit of Dymorphus.
The research team found that Dimorphos, which is rotating 780-meter-sized ‘Didynmos’ in an orbit 1.2 km away at an orbital period of 11 hours and 55 minutes, changed its orbit minutely due to this collision, and the orbital period was about 10 minutes (about 1%). expected to be shorter.
Whether the trajectory of Dimorphus actually changed due to the collision of the DART spacecraft, which cost a total of $380 million (429 billion won), will be confirmed through ground and space telescope observations over the next several weeks.
“We are entering a new era with the potential to protect ourselves from dangerous asteroid impacts,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s director of planetary science, confident that the experiment was a huge success.
/yunhap news