Home » NASA successfully smashes DART probe into asteroid Dimorphos

NASA successfully smashes DART probe into asteroid Dimorphos

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NASA successfully smashes DART probe into asteroid Dimorphos

NASA NASA / reuters

After a year of flight, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully hit the targeted asteroid Dimorphos earlier. Scientists will next look to see if the impact changed Dimorphos’ appearance and (more importantly) its orbit.

DART itself, a probe the size of a vending machine, lifted off in November last year and has since sprinted toward the Didymos system almost in a straight line. In addition to confirming the possibility of changing the orbit by impact, a large part of this test is to test whether the automatic navigation system carried by the probe can accurately hit the target. DART started the autopilot system about 4 hours before impact, and its DRACO camera locked onto Dimorphos about 1 hour before impact. DART then corrected its orbit twice at 20 and 4 minutes before impact.

DART Dimorphos

NASA

At the last moment, DART continued to transmit the image of Dimorphos. You can see that Dimorphos gradually became clearer from a fuzzy dot, and finally you can see the gravel on the surface. The picture above is the last complete picture DART sent back before impact, after which DART hit Dimorphos at a speed of about 22,500km/h.

Dimorphos is especially a satellite of another asteroid called Didymos, of which Didymos is about 780 meters in diameter, while Dimorphos is only about 160 meters in diameter. This makes the pair of asteroids ideal for observing how their orbits change after being hit by an alien object. Astronomers expect Dimorphos’ original orbit of about 12 hours to be shortened by about 10 minutes under the best-case scenario, but a reduction of more than 73 seconds would be considered a success. Exactly how much shortened will be revealed after Dimorphos completes a full orbit, which means the answer should be known later today.

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The DART mission is seen as a precursor to Earth’s defense against asteroid impacts, testing whether hitting an asteroid with a probe can change its orbital period as expected. Although this change is extremely small, if the asteroid is discovered early, this little change may make the asteroid miss the earth.

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