Dallas Area Rapid Transit? I had no idea they go that far.
Posted on 09/28/2022 11:30:39 AM PDT by Red Badger
Video released by the ATLAS project shows the explosive impact 7 million miles from Earth.
a gray, craggly asteroid against the dark of space Our first up-close look at Dimorphos, captured by the DART probe's DRACO camera.
NASA/JHUAPL When NASA deliberately crashed its DART spacecraft into an asteroid Monday, the daring but doomed probe was sending back incredible images. But on impact, the screen faded to black. We couldn't see just how big of a dent that DART made.
Fortunately, many telescopes around the world were tracking the asteroid pair known as Didymos and Dimorphos. The ATLAS project, which takes advantage of telescopes across the world, grabbed a great video of the moment of impact, which occurred about 7 million miles from Earth.
You can see it below:
VIDEO:
https://twitter.com/fallingstarIfA/status/1574583529731670021?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1574583529731670021%7Ctwgr%5E19fa66fdb0a5eb321b5e52131eb80a9f0913960e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fscience%2Fspace%2Fnasa-telescope-captures-epic-collision-between-dart-probe-and-asteroid-dimorphos%2F
ATLAS, or the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, is a collaboration between NASA and the University of Hawaii. It is designed to detect rogue space rocks, including those that might be a threat to Earth, scanning the skies several times each night.
The ATLAS telescopes in Hawaii were focused on Didymos and Dimorphos during DART's collision on Monday. The probe was traveling at over 14,000 miles per hour when it hit the smaller of the two: Dimorphos, an asteroid that's the size of Rome's Colosseum and that orbits Didymos.
The time of impact was 4:14 p.m. PT. The moment shows a brightening and a plume of light erupting around the crash site as DART ends with a bang.
It was a bang heard 'round the world. Not literally, of course. There was no sound -- but plenty of viewers watched on NASA's livestream as the probe's cameras delivered its death dive second by second. The DART mission is a test to see if we can knock space rocks off course, should they ever be headed our way.
We'll have to wait for a few more telescope images -- and a 2024 mission -- to find out exactly how much impact DART had.
Doesn’t matter unless it was able to make some difference to the course
We won’t know for months because ….
the supercomputers are taking a siesta
Watched the live coverage. Where in the world did NASA get such goony bird employees with their preening and giggling? It was painful to listen to.
We won’t know for months because … the supercomputers are taking a siesta
—
and they forgot to include a companion unit to stand off and send what happened after the impact. Now they are reduced to inferring what happened to something that is not more than a few pixels as seen from Earth.
It was a gaggle of Nerds........................
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!
Well they broke the rack, here they come... lol
in twenty years it will be on a collision course with earth...
Thousands of tonnes of rock getting impacted by a few hundred pounds is unlikely to produce any significant change.
~~~
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?
Those last couple frames especially are cool.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit? I had no idea they go that far.
“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.
And all the clapping all the time. Not how I remember NASA in the old days of real accomplishments.
The Space X people do it, too.
Youngsters…
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,
Next time, put Her Royal Heinous aboard the spacecraft.
That asteroid looks like Joe Dirt’s childhood friend.
“Uh, it’s a space peanut.”
The transfers are AWESOME!........................
PING!................
It now can crash a $300 million space probe intentionally instead of accidentally.
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