NASA’s unprecedented asteroid experiment continues to produce results.
Last year, with the mission dartsthe space agency intentionally crashed a sacrificial spacecraft into an asteroid. dimorphosIt was seven million miles from Earth. Scientists wanted to prove that civilization could change the course of humanity. threat asteroid — if on a collision course with Earth — and they managed to peck at a (non-threatening) 525-foot-wide space rock.
Planetary researchers are now watching the aftermath of this event to gather as much information as possible about how best to alter or redirect future asteroids. NASA Published an image Captured by the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits about 332 miles above Earth, it shows a “rock cluster” from an experimental impact. This can be seen below.
“This is an amazing observation. It far exceeded our expectations,” said David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement. “We see a cloud of rocks that have carried mass and energy away from the impact object. The number, size and shape of the rocks are consistent with those knocked off the surface of Demorphos by the impact.”
“The rocks are some of the darkest things ever photographed within our solar system,” Jewitt added.
Hubble has glimpsed these cosmic megaliths, which range in size from 3 feet to 22 feet wide, from millions of miles away.
At 14,000 miles per hour, the impact of the DART was like slamming a spacecraft the size of a vending machine into a space rock the size of a stadium.
Crashing a spaceship into Demorphos might sound dramatic, but the goal was just to shock it. Nudge. During the actual deflection of an incoming asteroid, such a nudge would occur years and decades before an impending collision. “Enough time to make sure we miss Earth,” Andrew Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and one of DART’s principal scientists, told Mashable last year. Over the years, small changes in the asteroid’s motion add up to big changes in its final trajectory.
Of course, this strategy requires knowing what happens.The good news is that astronomers are already Over 27,000 Near-Earth Objects Detectedand have About 1,500 found Every year since 2015.
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Astronomers estimate that thousands of large asteroids over 460 feet wide have yet to be discovered.Fortunately, astronomers Over 90% already found Rocks over 800 meters wide (and countless more) can wreak havoc on large swaths of the planet. But smaller, elusive rocks still hold a powerful potential to sneak up on us. A rock approximately 187 to 427 feet in diameter swept into Earth in 2019 and surprised scientist.
Over the next few years, we will be able to take a closer look at the DART influence scene.of European Space Agency Hera mission One day, this first asteroid deflection experiment may play a role in saving countless lives from incoming space rocks.
