Produced by: Tarun Mishra
NASA's Double Asteroids Redirect Test (DART) successfully collided with Dimorphos, a moonlet orbiting the asteroid Didymos, on September 26, 2022. This mission was designed to test the kinetic impact method for deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).
The European Space Agency’s Hera mission is scheduled to rendezvous with the Didymos-Dimorphos system by October 2026. Hera will conduct a detailed survey of Dimorphos to assess the long-term effectiveness of the deflection method used by DART.
A recent study suggests that debris from the DART impact could potentially reach Earth and Mars within a decade. This research explores the possibility of impact ejecta from Dimorphos affecting these planets.
The international research team, led by Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, used data from the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) to analyze the ejecta created by the DART collision. Their simulations tracked 3 million particles resulting from the impact.
The study found that particles ejected at lower velocities could reach Mars in about 13 years, while faster particles could arrive on Earth in as little as seven years. However, observations suggest it may take up to 30 years before any of this debris is visible on Earth.
The study indicates that the particles might not be large enough to create visible meteors. Nevertheless, ongoing meteor observation campaigns will be crucial to determine if a new meteor shower, potentially named "Dimorphids," is generated by the ejected debris.
Representative pic
Future Mars missions might observe meteors formed from Didymos fragments entering the Martian atmosphere. The data from DART and LICIACube will help refine models of impact processes and predict the characteristics of potential meteor showers.