Mission DART: Everything Went Wrong, Here's Why

In the fall of 2021, NASA sent a spaceDART probe into the asteroid Dimorphos. Less than a year later, that is, on September 26, 2022, a collision occurred - the device reached its goal and crashed against a space rock. The purpose of this experiment was to test the possibility of knocking an asteroid off course in order to prevent it from colliding with the Earth. In fact, it was a test of the system for protecting the Earth from threats from outer space. NASA scientists reported that the tests were successful, that is, the asteroid Amorphis really deviated from the course. However, later the researchers discovered something strange - the deviation turned out to be much stronger than originally planned. Moreover, according to calculations, the DART apparatus could not have affected Dimorphos in this way. Obviously, something happened that was not part of the scientists' plans.

Scientists report that the asteroid Dimorphos after a collision with the DART device began to behave differently than planned

What happened to the asteroid Dimorphos

The name DART is an acronym thatmeans “double asteroid redirection test”. By name, it is easy to guess that the device was sent to a system of two asteroids. The main one is the larger asteroid Didim, which has a diameter of about 750 meters. Dimorphos is its satellite and has a more modest size - about 160 meters in diameter.

The system of two satellites as a target waschosen for a reason. The period of rotation of one asteroid around another is well known. Prior to the collision with the DART spacecraft, Dimorphos made a complete revolution around the asteroid Didymus in 11.9 hours. According to this indicator, it was easy for scientists to track any deviations from the course, even the most insignificant.

Dimorphos and Didymos - a system of two asteroids, one of which revolves around the other

According to the plan of scientists, after a collision withDART, the rotation period should have changed by only 7 minutes. However, as scientists from Northern Arizona University report in the journal Nature, the changes were more serious - the rotation period accelerated by 33 minutes.

There can be no errors in the calculation, since scientistsseparately measured two orbits in different ways, but the result was the same. According to the researchers, this change cannot be explained by the momentum that the DART spacecraft gave to the asteroid Dimorphos.

Why did the DART mission go wrong?

Many scientists have drawn attention to the unusualsubstance release. It occurred immediately after the impact of the DART device on the asteroid. But, as astronomer Jian-Yang Li, of the Institute of Planetary Science, points out, this was no ordinary explosion. For almost two weeks after the impact, dust tails erupted from Dimorphos. At that moment, the asteroid resembled a very dry comet, as reported in a study published also in the journal Nature.

Dimorphos after the collision began to rotate around the asteroid Didyme unnaturally fast

But this is not the only oddityhappened to an asteroid. In another article published in the same journal Nature, scientists from the SETI Institute report that Dimorphos has lost 0.3-0.5% of its mass. They came to this conclusion on the basis of optical observations of the brightness of the asteroid before the collision, at the moment of impact and after it.

Obviously, the release caused not only the lossthe mass of the asteroid, but also changes in the speed of rotation around the asteroid Didyma. This is reported by the staff of Johns Hopkins University in their study, published a few days ago in the journal Nature. Moreover, the effect of the “jet engine” gave the asteroid a much greater impulse than the impact with the spacecraft.

The idea of ​​protecting the Earth from asteroids in a kinetic way turned out to be viable

Can asteroid defenses be more effective?

On the one hand, the DART mission did not go according to plan,since scientists could not foresee the powerful release of gas from the asteroid, which gave acceleration to the asteroid. But on the other hand, the mission turned out to be even more effective than expected. According to a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University who reconstructed events at the time of the collision on the timeline, the technology was viable and its results were promising. Humans can indeed successfully change the course of asteroids that threaten the Earth in a kinetic way.

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To protect our planet from threats from outer spaceit is enough to have at least limited knowledge about the composition of the hazardous object and the features of its surface. Such information can be obtained without flights to these objects. The only thing is that it is necessary to engage in exploration in advance, that is, several decades in advance. Fortunately, no one is in a hurry. As we said earlier, nothing threatens our planet for the next 100 years.