NASA Smashed Into an Asteroid in 2022. The Debris Could End Up Reaching Earth

In September 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully demonstrated however a fast-moving spacecraft could alteration an asteroid’s trajectory by crashing into it, perchance providing a mode to support Earth—though the asteroid successful this trial was ne'er a existent threat. A followup survey suggests that debris from the 525-foot (160-meter) Dimorphos could really onslaught back, though we’re not successful immoderate danger. The squad posits that the collision produced a tract of rocky ejecta that could scope Earth wrong 10 years. The probe is currently hosted connected the preprint server arXiv and is acceptable to people successful The Planetary Science Journal.

The DART ngo was truthful important due to the fact that it showed that humankind really does person a mode to support itself from the existential menace of incoming abstraction rocks, similar the 1 that ended the dinosaurs’ primacy connected Earth immoderate 66 cardinal years ago. The DART squad was a winner of the 2023 Gizmodo Science Fair for this superlative accomplishment successful planetary defense.

In their caller study, scientists studied information collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, oregon LICIACube, which observed DART’s interaction of Dimorphos up close. Then, they fed LICIACube’s information into supercomputers astatine NASA’s Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) to simulate however the debris from the asteroid—basically particulate and rock—may person disseminated into space. The simulations tracked astir 3 cardinal particles kicked up by the impact, immoderate of which are ample capable to nutrient meteors that could beryllium spotted connected Earth.

Particles from the interaction could get to Mars successful 7 to 13 years, and the fastest particles could marque it to our ain satellite successful conscionable 7 years. “This elaborate information volition assistance successful the recognition of DART-created meteors, enabling researchers to accurately analyse and construe impact-related phenomena,” the squad wrote successful the paper.

About 40 abstraction boulders were visible successful the vicinity of Dimorphos soon aft DART impacted the asteroid astir 2 years ago. The ngo altered Dimorphos’ presumption by tens of meters, indicating that a akin attack could beryllium taken to mitigate the harm of aboriginal potentially hazardous asteroids. Though nary asteroid presently threatens beingness connected Earth (that we cognize of), it’s a real-enough menace that abstraction agencies regularly run simulations of worst-case scenarios. But arsenic the caller survey shows, conscionable deflecting the asteroid whitethorn beryllium fractional the battle. Like a stale muffin, you tin bat it away… but crumbs inactive get everywhere.