Boulders knocked into space during the DART impact are circled in blue.Image credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA)
Posted on 07/23/2023 7:04:06 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the gory aftermath of the first-ever intentional collision between a spacecraft and an asteroid, revealing a debris field of at least 37 "boulders" flung thousands of miles into space.
On Sept. 26, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft disintegrated as it smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos, which is 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, successfully changing the asteroid's trajectory.
Now, by using Hubble to study the impact, astronomers have found that DART's roughly 14,540 mph (23,400 km/h) impact on the asteroid produced a "swarm of boulders." The rocks, which range from 3 to 22 feet (0.9 to 6.7 meters) in diameter, were most likely shaken loose from the asteroid's surface during the impact. The researchers published their findings July 20 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes," David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system."
DART's goal was to change the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger partner — the 2,560-foot-wide (780 m) asteroid Didymos — by at least 73 seconds. However, the spacecraft widely exceeded that target, altering Dimorphos' orbit by a whopping 32 minutes...
The boulders, which make up an estimated 0.1% of Dimorphos' mass, were spotted drifting away from the asteroid at just over a half mile per hour (0.8 km/h) — "roughly the walking speed of a giant tortoise," according to NASA.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Boulders knocked into space during the DART impact are circled in blue.Image credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA)
Holy arcseconds batman.
That’ll teach that rock to mess with Earth. ;^)
It’s a good proof of concept demonstration. My view is, redirecting the trajectory of something we can move, that is already up there, and preferably moving in retrograde around the Sun, would be good to have all set up, and would deliver more energy to the larger interlopers on course for us. With a large hazard, it’s better to turn the whole thing into space gravel.
That’ll teach that rock to mess with Earth
or the other way around , now it can cover more area
The real problem is finding them early enough to really do anything about them.
My proposal is to fund a group of special purpose telescopes that look for dangerous asteroids. The naming convention, where the discoverer of an asteroid gets to name it gives us an opportunity for funding.
If someone like Coors, were to fund a telescope, the discovery of “Coors 2025” would both advance science and provide advertising...
“or the other way around , now it can cover more area”
made a rifle bullet into a shotgun with the same ballistics.
Just passing by - read the stupid headline. In all my life, I have never associated or used the word ‘gory’ with rocks splitting up - even ‘gory aftermath’ - just doesn’t go. Almost always for me it involves blood and guts and body parts of some sort.
You got Asteroids?
No, but my dad does, can’t even sit on the toilet sometimes.
An ill chosen word to be sure. Quite out of place.
I had a kidney stone once.....felt like asteroids going through!
Busting it up so that it burns up high in the atmosphere, rather than causing damage on the ground, is almost as good as deflecting it.
One important bit of data is how “solid” these asteroids are, in the sense of how much impact it takes to bust them up.
Chances are, the only way to find out how solid they are is to smack ‘em with something and see what happens. Teller suggested a large number of bullet-shaped tungsten objects, embedded in a sort of net. It would be launched wadded up, then deployed opened up wide, and sent head-on into the interloper rock. Most of the energy to slice-and-dice would be from the rock itself.
If you don’t like that, you probably share my dislike of “decapitated foot” and “very unique”. :^)
Yup—these “geniuses” could turn one large near miss into a bunch of small but very disastrous direct hits.
I would think a spear that penetrated deep in, with the energy breaking it from inside.
DART's goal was to change the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger partner — the 2,560-foot-wide (780 m) asteroid Didymos — by at least 73 seconds. However, the spacecraft widely exceeded that target, altering Dimorphos' orbit by a whopping 32 minutes...So what unexpected sequence of events have they initiated now?
Review this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
