The ongoing impact humans had after catching a piece of rock traveling about
the Sun last year is shown by a new observation.
NASA crashed a spacecraft onto the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022.
Recent images by Hubble reveal a massive swarm of rocks that were thrown
loose by the collision and dispersed like stars in the asteroid's wake.
In order to improve and better prepare for similar strikes in the future,
the new photographs will aid a voyage to the asteroid that is now in the
process of studying the outcomes of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test
(DART).
Planetary scientist David Jewitt of the University of California, Los
Angeles, said, "This is a spectacular observation - much better than I
expected."
The boulders are moving mass and energy away from the hit target in a cloud.
The rocks' quantity, dimensions, and forms are compatible with their having
been thrown off Dimorphos' surface by the impact.
This explains to us for the first time what occurs when an asteroid is
struck and material of the greatest proportions is released. Some of the
weakest objects ever captured on camera in our solar system are the
boulders.
The DART mission may have seemed like a lot of fun (and, let's face it, it
was), but it served a very important function. The goal was to test our
ability to do so in the case of a potentially dangerous asteroid heading
toward Earth by trying to gently deviate Dimorphos from its present orbit
around the bigger asteroid Didymos.
The experiment was a huge success. Despite still being gravitationally
bonded as a binary asteroid, Dimorphos and Didymos' prior orbital period
of 7.9 hours shrunk by 33 minutes. That is a considerably more noticeable
outcome than was predicted.
However, because we are yet unsure of the full extent of the impact's
repercussions, researchers are still keeping an eye on the double
asteroid, using telescopes like the Hubble to spot any subtle changes that
would go undetected by other detectors.
On December 19, 2022, Hubble saw the newly released object, which
revealed a cloud of stones dispersed throughout space near Dimorphos and Didymos.
37 pebbles, measuring 1 to 6.7 meters (3 to 22 feet) broad, and travelling
away from the asteroid at a speed of around 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) per
hour have been identified by scientists.
Although the DART probe struck Dimorphos at a speed of around 22,500
kilometers per hour (14,000 miles per hour), the debris is most likely
not made up of broken-off pieces of the asteroid.
Images from DART reveal loose rocks on the asteroid's surface before the
collision; the impact certainly forced them loose, though the exact
mechanism is yet unknown. It's possible that the first hit was to blame,
or that it caused seismic vibrations that subsequently let them free.
Hera, a spacecraft that will launch in 2024, will go to the asteroid to
examine the findings of the impact test.
When Hera shows up, the boulder cloud will still be fading,
according to Jewitt. The binary pair's orbit around the Sun will ultimately be covered by
what looks like a very slowly spreading swarm of bees.
Continued Hubble check-ins will enable scientists to determine the
stones' trajectories away from the asteroid, allowing us to determine
precisely where they originated from and, maybe, how they launched in
the first place.
You can download a wallpaper-sized version of the image from the
ESA Hubble website.
