NASA’s asteroid fragmentation probe sends rocks into space
- July 23, 2023
- 0
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope on Thursday showed a NASA spacecraft hurling dozens of rocks into space when it successfully knocked an asteroid off course last year.
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope on Thursday showed a NASA spacecraft hurling dozens of rocks into space when it successfully knocked an asteroid off course last year. Last September, NASA’s refrigerator-sized DART probe crashed into the pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped asteroid Dimorphos, about 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth.
A spacecraft significantly derailed an asteroid during the first test of Earth’s planetary defenses. New images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the collision also blew 37 rocks ranging from one meter (three feet) to seven meters (22 feet) into space.
They make up about two percent of the rocks scattered across the loosely bound asteroid’s surface, scientists estimate in a new study. The finding suggests that future missions could also throw rocks in our direction to deflect life-threatening asteroids headed for Earth.
But these particular species pose no threat to Earth – they hardly spread anywhere. They’re moving away from Dimorphos at about one kilometer (half a mile) per hour — the walking speed of a giant tortoise, Hubble said in a statement.
The rocks are moving so slowly that the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, due to arrive at the asteroid in late 2026, will be able to glimpse them to examine the damage.
“When Hera arrives, the rock cloud will continue to dissipate,” said David Jewitt, UCLA planetary scientist and lead author of the new study.
“It’s like a very slowly expanding swarm of bees,” he said.
He added that Hubble’s “amazing observation” “tells us for the first time what happens when you collide with an asteroid and see the material coming out.”
“The rocks are some of the faintest things ever seen in our solar system.”
The scattering of rocks indicates that DART left a crater about 50 meters (160 feet) wide at Dimorphos, Jewitt said. The diameter of the entire asteroid is 170 meters. The scientists plan to continue watching the rocks to determine their trajectories and determine exactly how they are separated from the surface. Source
Source: Port Altele
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