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Science & Technology
DART mission is a 'smashing success': NASA reveals craft that collided with an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth nudged its orbit by 32 minutes - more than triple the initial goal
2022-10-12
  • NASA's first planetary defense mission is announced to be a success

  • The spacecraft shifted the orbit asteroid Dimorphos and shortened it by 32 minutes - the initial goal was just 10 minutes

  • The event was tasked at seeing if NASA could nudge an asteroid heading to Earth off its orbit in order to save our planet from a catastrophic impact


Courtesy of Lord Garth:
NASA's hit on Asteroid altered its orbit

[MSN] The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles. It took consecutive nights of telescope observations from Chile and South Africa to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock....

.Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists had anticipated shaving off 10 minutes, but Nelson said the impact shortened the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes.
Related:
Dimorphos: 2022-09-26 Real-life Deep Impact: NASA will intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid at 15,000mph TODAY - and the method could one day save Earth from a deadly impact
Dimorphos: 2022-09-25 NASA will intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid at 15,000mph on Monday
Posted by:Skidmark

#2  So far it looks like everything went according to plan. There was a bit of a breath holder as it wasn't a solid body, more like a pile of rubble and the ejecta was more than they thought there would be due to its loose nature. A lot of the kinetic energy could have been lost that way since it was a rubble pile (see bullet backstop on a firing range).

But the measurements coming back seems like it went well.
Posted by: DarthVader   2022-10-12 08:14  

#1  But was it nudged in the direction they planned?

I ask, because it could make the difference between a glancing hit (atmosphere/SAT Orbit area) vs. a direct hit.
Posted by: NN2N1   2022-10-12 08:08  

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