The DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, putting it into a smaller orbit around the asteroid Didymos. As a result of the collision, Dimorph’s orbit time was reduced by 32 minutes.Initially, scientists had planned that the orbital time would be reduced by just 10 minutes. According to NASA, this is the first time humanity has deliberately altered the motion of a celestial body and is the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.
Before colliding with the DART probe, Dimorphus needed 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete one orbit around its larger parent asteroid, Didymus. Astronomers used telescopes on Earth to measure how much orbital time had changed after the September 26 collision. It turned out that the collision shortened Dimorphos’ orbit from 11 hours 55 minutes to 11 hours 23 minutes.
Exceeded expectations 25 times
NASA determined that the minimum successful change in Dimorphus’ orbital period was 73 seconds or more. Available data suggest that DART exceeds this criterion by more than 25 times. The research team continues to collect data from ground observatories and radars around the world to improve the accuracy of the new orbital prediction.
The focus now is to measure the momentum transfer efficiency of the DART spacecraft hitting its target at around 22,530 km/h, and further analysis of the tons of asteroids displaced by the impact of the collision and thrown into space.More information on the asteroid’s physical properties, such as surface properties, is needed to understand the launch effect, and researchers are reportedly currently working on this.
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