2023-10-07 13:00:00
The spacecraft’s kinetic impact with Dimorphos successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. Joana Campos Meteored Portugal 07/10/2023 15:00 5 min
A group of researchers measured the orbital period of the asteroid Dimorphos about a month after impact and found that it had increased to 34 minutes, a minute longer than the first measurements.
Although this is a single impact of the mission DART, some force continued to slow down the asteroid’s orbit, and astronomers do not yet know what this mechanism could be.
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“We find that no previously presented mechanism for this system can explain this large period change, and that the entrainment of material ejected by the impact is an unlikely explanation,” the researchers write in their article, published as a preprint in arXiv. “Further observations of the system (65803) Didymos are necessary to confirm our result and better understand this system after the impact”. The goal of the DART mission was to test how asteroids respond to impacts.
Impact!
One year ago today, @NASAs DART Mission successfully collided with the non-hazardous asteroid Dimorphos as a test for potential future planetary protection. This video shows the final moments before impact. pic.twitter.com/MRqI4fFO8O
— National Air and Space Museum (@airandspace) September 26, 2023
When the first post-impact data was published, the change in orbital period caused a lot of noise, because this type of kinetic impact is a planetary defense technique in which a spacecraft intentionally collides with a potentially dangerous asteroid in order to modify its trajectory.
DART data helps NASA and theESA to prepare for the possibility of having to redirect an asteroid away from a possible impact with Earth.
Impact of the DART mission on the asteroid Dimorphos
DART weighed 610 kg and collided with Dimorphos at a speed of approximately 22,530 km/h. In doing so, it dug a crater on the surface of Dimorphos which ejected more than 900,000 kg of debris in space. The data indicates that DART’s impact on Dimorphos also altered the trajectory of its parent asteroid, Didymos.
The DART science team continues to analyze its data, as well as new information on the composition of the asteroid’s moon and the characteristics of the ejection, to determine how much DART’s initial impact deflected the asteroid’s trajectory and how much was due to recoil.
However, another group of researchers, led by Taylor Gudebski and Elisabeth Heldridge, used the 0.7 m telescope of theThacher observatorylocated on the campus of the Thacher School in California, to carry out its observations. They measured the change in post-collision period during observations taken 20 to 30 days after the initial data, and their results indicate that the period of the system may have shortened during this short period.
The asteroid’s orbital period changed after the DART mission impact. However, even almost a month later, the orbit duration continued to change. It remains to be seen why and whether this will continue.
One theory is that the debris cloud, due to its size and its evolution over time, could have influenced the orbit of Dimorphos. Astronomers tracked the evolution of the collision debris cloud for a month and found that as the debris expanded outward, structures began to form, such as clusters, spirals and a long tail pushed back by solar radiation.
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This group of researchers and the DART mission team will continue to observe and study the impact of this mission. It will be interesting to know if the orbital period continues to decrease and how this might affect the use of kinetic impactors.
Furthermore, another spacecraft will be launched in 2024 to study Dimorphos more closely. The Hera mission of ESA is expected to reach Didymos and Dimorphos in December 2026. Hera will carry out a detailed study of the asteroid to better understand how it was affected by the impact.
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