Produced by: Tarun Mishra
The outcomes of NASA's DART mission to the asteroid Dimorphos have been unveiled in Nature Astronomy, providing insights into asteroid composition and potential defence strategies against space rock threats.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, launched in November 2021, aimed to assess the feasibility of deflecting an asteroid away from a collision course with Earth through a kinetic impact, by deliberately colliding with the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022
Unlike missions to planets and moons, asteroid missions present unique challenges due to their small size and negligible gravity, making landing and sample collection difficult.
Unlike previous asteroid missions focused on sample collection, DART's distinctive approach involved a high-speed collision with Dimorphos to induce a change in its orbit.
Dimorphos is part of a binary asteroid system with Didymus, where Dimorphos acts as a moon orbiting the larger Didymus. DART's impact aimed to alter Dimorphos's orbit around Didymus.
Simulations of DART's collision with Dimorphos indicate a significant change in the asteroid's orbit, resulting in a slower rotation around Didymus and a reshaping of its surface.
Despite DART's relatively small mass compared to Dimorphos, the high-speed collision caused material to be ejected from the asteroid, resulting in a momentum change and alteration of its orbit.
Usually, such impacts cause a very large crater on the area of impact on the asteroid, this time however, scientists predict that the collision might have changed the shape of the asteroid.
The success of the DART mission demonstrates the potential effectiveness of kinetic impactors in diverting asteroids from collision paths with Earth, paving the way for future asteroid defence strategies.
The DART mission's findings underscore the importance of early detection and intervention in mitigating asteroid impact risks, with implications for future asteroid mining endeavours and private sector involvement in space exploration.