NASA experts have confirmed that the collision of the spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorph successfully deflected the celestial body from its original orbit. This is the first time that humanity has intentionally changed the movement of a space object, which proves the operability of a potential Earth protection system. This is reported in a press release on the agency's website.
Before the impact of the DART spacecraft, it took Dimorph 11 hours and 55 minutes to make a revolution around the larger asteroid Didyma. After the collision, the orbit time was reduced by 32 minutes and amounted to 11 hours and 23 minutes with an error of plus or minus two minutes. Scientists predicted that the minimum change in the circulation period should be 73 seconds, but the result exceeded the lower threshold by more than 25 times.
The research team is still collecting data from ground-based observatories around the world, as well as from the Goldstone Solar System planetary radar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the radar at the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. The focus is on measuring the efficiency of momentum transfer when a DART collides with a target at a speed of approximately 22,530 kilometers per hour. To do this, scientists will analyze the mass of an asteroid rock ejected into space as a result of an impact and triggered as an exhaust that pushed the celestial body away from the previous trajectory.
Astronomers will continue to study Dimorph images obtained both with the DART spacecraft before the collision and from the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) satellite The Italian Space Agency. This will allow us to approximately determine the mass and shape of the asteroid, as well as the effect of the recoil from the ejection of the rock. In about four years, the European Space Agency's Hera project plans to conduct detailed studies of the Dimorph and Didymus, including the crater formed as a result of the DART collision, and also to carry out accurate measurements of the Dimorph mass.
The DART mission was launched by the European Space Agency ESA in 2021, and the collision occurred on September 26, 2022. The purpose of the experiment is to test the effectiveness of kinetic impact techniques for deflecting an asteroid potentially threatening the Earth. The CubeSat satellite, designed to visually study the impact site, separated from DART 10 days before the collision. Experts emphasize that neither Dimorph nor Didymus posed a danger to the Earth before the controlled collision with DART and do not pose a threat after it.
