Remember the DART mission where NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in 2022?
The target was Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. The impact successfully shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by about 33 minutes, which was the main goal.
But new analysis suggests the collision also slightly altered the entire asteroid system’s orbit around the Sun.
The change is tiny (around 0.15 seconds in orbital period), but it’s measurable. Basically, by hitting Dimorphos we gave the whole Didymos system a microscopic shove through space.
It’s a pretty cool proof of concept for planetary defense.
If we ever detect an asteroid heading toward Earth far enough in advance, even a small push like this could be enough to make it miss us.
https://i.redd.it/bczklcbtt4pg1.jpeg
13 Comments
I dunno… Asteroid impact on earth might improve things.
Humans tend to do well with the ol’ trusty, thrown rock.
“Turns out” is a strange way of saying “expected results have been measured, peer reviewed, and released; and the data will be useful in refining models for orbital shifts in loose and solid asteroids.”
Huh. Makes intuitive sense, you’re reducing the overall orbital velocity of the combined mass of the two body system, but… It’s still cool. I would’ve automatically assumed it would have only affected the moon, but, no… Of course not.
They’re sharing a gravity well, in which a major component just had its velocity slightly reduced by a high velocity impact, so… of course the shared system is affected.
That’s neat.
Makes a fun realization about wider orbital mechanics within the entire solar system. Scifi level shifting asteroids around would be… Huh.
…I wanna play Kerbal space program.
Is there a YouTube video or article that explains how this works in depth?
DART is one of the greatest and coolest things humanity has ever accomplished and almost nobody noticed or cared. I don’t get it. This is one of my favorite space missions ever.
This is literally what we already knew what would happen?
Ok where’s the part where they tell us they calculated the next X thousand years of orbits and now it’s going to hit Earth way earlier than it ever would have before?
Action has equal and opposite reaction: news at 11
NASA also slightly changed earth’s orbit around the sun when they launched the rocket.
Jt’d be fun if the new calculated trajectory was actually a collision course now
did the thing move when you hit it with another thing
Newton’s law be like: you don’t say!