Considering the mass of the asteroid (about the size of a football stadium) and the mass of DART (double-wide Coke machine) I would be surprised if it made any difference. Thousands of tonnes of rock getting impacted by a few hundred pounds is unlikely to produce any significant change.
What really surprised me was that they even hit that rock!
Good shooting!
Thousands of tonnes of rock getting impacted by a few hundred pounds is unlikely to produce any significant change.
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Depends. It’s not just the comparative mass of the two objects, but also the energy they each had compared to each other. You can shoot a 4 ounce bullet an an object weighing hundreds of pounds, but because of it’s velocity it will impart a lot of energy into it.
Also consider the factor of time. The change my be extremely minute if measured in seconds, but in a few months there will be a difference.
“Thousands of tonnes of rock getting impacted by a few hundred pounds is unlikely to produce any significant change.”
But what if it carried a nuclear bomb that went off on impact?
“What really surprised me was that they even hit that rock!
Good shooting!”
No kidding. Taking a shot at a 100 yard wide object 7 million miles away. Give those engineers a marksmanship badge.
Dimorphos has a mass of approx. 5×109 kg, i.e., 5 million metric tons. It revolves around its primary at about 0.174 meters per sec. The DART impactor (with a mass of 610 kg) impacted Dimorphos at a speed of 6.6 km per sec, and is expected to reduce Dimorphos's orbital period (11.921624±0.000018 hr) by at least 10 minutes.
All figures from Wikipedia.
Regards,