NASA's DART impact changed entire shape of asteroid and shrunk its orbit

Devdiscourse News Desk| California

Updated: 20-03-2024 12:58 IST | Created: 20-03-2024 12:58 IST

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

NASA's DART(Double Asteroid Redirection Test), the world's first planetary defense test, deliberately smashed into an asteroid on Sept. 26, 2022, demonstrating a technique known as kinetic impact to alter an asteroid's trajectory in space. Now a new study shows the impact changed not only the motion but also the shape of the target asteroid.

DART targeted Dimorphos, a 560-foot-wide (170-meter-wide) asteroid moonlet that orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) near-Earth asteroid called Didymos.

Before the DART impact, Dimorphos had a roughly symmetrical "oblate spheroid" shape, akin to a squashed ball. However, following the impact, it took on a more elongated shape, like a watermelon.

"When DART made impact, things got very interesting. Dimorphos' orbit is no longer circular: Its orbital period - the time it takes to complete a single orbit – "is now 33 minutes and 15 seconds shorter. And the entire shape of the asteroid has changed, from a relatively symmetrical object to a 'triaxial ellipsoid' - something more like an oblong watermelon," said Shantanu Naidu, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who led the study.

The team behind this discovery used three data sources to deduce what had happened to the asteroid after impact.

Their computer models also calculated how Dimorphos' orbital period evolved following NASA's DART impact. The analysis revealed that the impact not only altered its shape, but also reduced its orbital period by 33 minutes and 15 seconds. This shift brought the asteroid approximately 120 feet (37 meters) closer to Didymos.

READ MORE ON

NASA DART impactDART asteroid collisionNASAasteroids

READ MORE

OPINION / BLOG

LATEST NEWS

VIDEOS

View All