Uncovering the Mysteries of Asteroid Collisions: NASA’s DART Test and the Consequences of High-Speed Impact

2023-10-12 15:05:19
Nearly a year ago, NASA’s “DART Double Asteroid Redirection Test” relied on a probe carried by the Space X rocket to hit the asteroid Dimorphos at a speed of 14,000 miles per hour. . The purpose of NASA’s test is to see whether the rocket-launched probe used by the DART space program can change the trajectory of giant rocks in space through high-speed collisions. The ultimate goal of this technology is to protect the Earth from the threat of deadly asteroid impacts in the future. The initial test was successful, but NASA is trying to figure out the details of the collision to learn more about the consequences. Scientists first study what will happen to the explosion fragments produced after impacting an asteroid or boulder? After all, asteroids are much smaller and harder to observe than stars like the moon, making it difficult to determine their density and composition from a distance. For example, when an asteroid hits, will it bounce? Will a rocket probe cause a big crater if it crashes into it? Or the nature of the asteroid is not solid enough. If the rocket hits it, will it break up into space debris large enough to threaten the earth? 1. Space asteroids unknown to mankind Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said that although they have conducted model experiments for this project, the shapes and sizes of these space objects are different, and the kinetic energy Shock response is also difficult to test. Even more troubling is that many asteroids appear to be just “rubble piles” made of loose stacks of dirt, rock and ice, rather than being as hard and dense as planets. The asteroid “Ryuugu” (162173 Ryugu) that Japan Space Agency’s Hayabusa 2 exploration rocket approached in June 2018 and the asteroid “Bennu” (101955 Bennu) sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx in 2020 are both Belongs to the rubble pile. A new study published in July 2023 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters shows that Dimorphos appears to be built this way, meaning an impact would likely have punched a large crater in the asteroid and left a massive Debris flies out into space.
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