The Double Asteroid Redirection Test changed the position of Dimorphos.
There is a person by the name ofLeah Crane.
After the DART crash, didymos and dimorphos appeared.
NASA/ASI.
The DART craft slammed into the space rock Dimorphos after travelling 11 million kilometres from Earth. It was an unmitigated success to see if we could fly a probe into an asteroid.
Dimorphos is a moonlet that is in the vicinity of Didymos. Didymos was circled by Dimorphos once every 11 hours and 55 minutes. It now takes only 11 hours and 23 minutes to go around.
Huge clouds of dust and debris blasted off the smaller asteroid, creating a recoil effect that pushed it closer to Didymos than if the impact hadn't resulted in this debris.
While Dimorphos and Didymos pose no danger to Earth, this success shows that if we were to spot an asteroid heading our way, crashing a spaceship into it might make it miss Earth.
We can design future missions to keep our planet safe by figuring out what happened when DART hit the asteroid.
It's free to sign up for our newsletter every Friday.
There are more on this topic.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
