DART Mission: “Rail cars” of material released after NASA hit an asteroid

Deconstructing the DART Asteroid Collision and its Follow-Up Using LICIACube and Hubble Space Telescopes

The success of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, which crashed into an asteroid called Dimorphos almost immediately after it was launched, was hailed as a huge success by scientists.

The DART team had calculated that when the spacecraft hit the asteroid it would transfer momentum 3.6 times greater than if there was no material on the surface. The momentum created when Dimorphos’ surface material blasted out into space contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did, the researchers said.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), developed by NASA in September of last year, altered an asteroid’s trajectory in order to test planetary defence. Now scientists have deconstructed the collision and its aftermath — and learnt just how successful humanity’s punch at the cosmos really was.

The collision was observed by both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Wrth Space Telescope, and they both observed the aftermath of the collision.

The most dramatic images came from LICIACube, a mini Italian satellite that was following DART and watched the event from a safe distance. The best part? We’re going to see so much more over the next two months.

The 12th Women’s Nobel Prize in Physics and Astrophysics: A First Look at Webb’s First Image of the Observed Galaxy Webb

The public is not allowed to view the nominators, short list, and the selection process for these awards.

There are many ladies who are worthy of consideration, such as Dr. Mary-Claire King who discovered cancer-causing genes and Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston, whose work was the first to treat a disease that could not be cured by surgery.

CNN’s top female scientists have made some important discoveries in vaccine research, astronomy and chemistry.

Popping fireworks, sizzling bacon and extended booms of thunder are some of the sounds associated with Earth’s massive glaciers.

On April 14, 1912, the British merchant steamship had sent a message to the RMS Titanic, but the iceberg warning never reached the massive ocean liner’s main control center on that fateful night.

The death of 20 people due to a German submarine torpedoed the Mesaba six years later. But the exact location of the vessel has been unknown until now.

When compared with Hubble’s view of the same spiral galaxy, it was more surprising to see the “bones” of it.

Meanwhile, astronomers analyzed Webb’s very first image and determined that it contains some of the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe – including one that looks a lot like a celestial firework.

– The Hubble Space Telescope may get a boost into a higher orbit to extend its life, depending on the findings under a new exploratory agreement between NASA and SpaceX.

The Phenomenology of Shashing a Spacecraft into an Asteroid: What do you need to know to improve the kinetic energy?

Second, the kinetic energy equation deals with the square of the velocity. This means that even though DART has a negative velocity, it still has positive kinetic energy.

We just have two equations and two variables that aren’t hard to solve. Here’s what you would get if you did the math. I have everything you need to know if you really need it.

Using the values for DART and Dimorphos, this gives a final velocity of 1.46 mm/s. That’s twice the recoil velocity for the inelastic collision. Since the DART spacecraft bounces back, it has a much larger change in momentum (going from positive to negative). This means that Dimorphos will also have a larger change in momentum and a larger change in velocity. It’s a small change, but twice something tiny is bigger than tiny.

Elastic and inelastic collisions are just the two extreme ends of the collision spectrum. Most fall somewhere in between, in that the objects don’t stick together but kinetic energy is not conserved. But you can see from the calculations above that the best way to change the trajectory of an asteroid is with an elastic collision.

Source: https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-smashing-a-spacecraft-into-an-asteroid/

Dimorphos and Asteroids: The DART mission’s asteroid colour change results from a probe of the solar system

Dimorphos orbits Didymos according to the same physics that make the moon orbit the Earth. Since there is a gravitational interaction between them, Didymos pulls Dimorphos toward their common center of mass—a point much closer to the center of Didymos, because it’s larger. This gravitational force would cause the two objects to eventually collide if they both started from rest. That’s not true. Dimorphos has avelocity that’s mostly related to the force of gravity, which causes it to move around the center of mass. This is possible that it is circular.

After a NASA mission to try and push an asteroid off course, the details of what happened are finally being released by scientists.

Researchers say that the technique could be applicable to future hazards even if NASA only demonstrates it on one asteroid. If there is a threat, it makes sense that we should design a mission to destroy the asteroid and we are aware that this has a very high chance of being effective.

“What we can learn from the DART mission is all part of a NASA’s overarching work to understand asteroids and other small bodies in our Solar System,” said Tom Statler, program scientist for DART at NASA, in a statement.

“Momentum transfer is one of the most important things we can measure, because it is information we would need to develop an impactor mission to divert a threating asteroid,” said Andy Cheng, DART investigation team lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, in a statement.

The discovery of more details is helping researchers to understand why the impact was so successful in shunting the asteroid, says Carolyn Ernst, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

A planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University reported the colour change at a December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. We think this is because we have a lot of material left over from Dimorphos. The impact blasted through the asteroid’s weathered interior and exposed part of its insides, making everything look redder until the fresh material dissipated.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Once the spacecraft went whammo, those images stopped. On the ground and in the space, telescopes show the impact released a huge cloud of dust and debris.

CHENG: there is a person The same way, if you shoot a gun and it shoots back at you, it kicks back against you. The extra force that’s pushing against the asteroid is the recoil force.

The fieldboyCE. He says in the future, if a dangerous asteroid is headed our way, scientists will have more confidence in their ability to deflect it, even larger asteroids or ones that show up with less warning. After the impact, astronomers watched fascinated as the cloud of debris around Dimorphos evolved into a long comet-like tail. It can still be detected by telescopes. Cristina Thomas is an astronomer with Northern Arizona University.

The Asteroid-Nasa-Wacked with a Comet-Like Tail on Dimorphos as seen by the NPR Experiment

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Andy Cheng says that the process is much more effective than people had thought.

The experiment has made scientists more confident in the ability of this method to protect the planet in the event of a danger to it from a space rock.

“It’s just a bright cloud. There was a lot of dust. We were amazed. We knew right then, we can do some good science with this,” says Ariel Graykowski with the SETI Institute, who works with a global network of telescope enthusiasts.

The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope was on the wrong side of Earth when the collision happened, so it couldn’t watch the event, but it gazed at the asteroid soon after and watched the debris cloud change over time.

“That’s really exciting to see in a way, that a comet-like tail formed and got longer and longer,” says Li, who is with the Planetary Science Institute.

It looked remarkably like tails that occasionally are seen on other asteroids, he says. It had never been clear what created those so-called ‘active’ asteroids, although some astronomers suspected impacts played a role.

The tail streaming off of Dimorphos can still be detected by telescopes. “We are still observing,” says Cristina Thomas with Northern Arizona University, who says observations should wrap up this month.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/04/1161082351/astronomers-still-have-their-eyes-on-that-asteroid-nasa-whacked

The Asteroid Move: How Did We Know It Worked and Why Did We Care About It, Anyway?” – M. J. Graykowski

“We’ve shown now that we have a method to move an asteroid,” says Graykowski. “It makes me feel a lot better to see that it worked, and that it worked so well.”