NASA's DART kicked up swarm of 37 boulders after Dimorphos asteroid crash
Up to two percent of the boulders on the asteroid's surface may have been kicked loose, Jewitt estimated. He believes that data from Hubble can be used to calculate the rough size of the crater leftover from the impact."The boulders could have been excavated from a circle of about 160 feet across on the surface of Dimorphos," he said.
Astronomers will have to wait a little while longer as the European Space Agency gears up to send its Hera probe in 2024 to get a closer look at how DART changed the double asteroid system. By the time Hera arrives at the site in 2026, the swarm of boulders will likely have dispersed."It's like a very slowly expanding swarm of bees that eventually will spread along the binary pair's orbit around the Sun," Jewitt said.
DART showed that it was possible to move an asteroid in space, but the Dimorphos-Didymos system was a test scenario. Hera will analyze the impact of DART's collision, and take more detailed measurements to better inform space agencies abouttechniques should Earth face the serious threat of incoming asteroid collision in the future.
In the meantime, astronomers will have to make do with the tools they have to answer any questions leftover. It's not clear how the swarm of boulders were ejected or whether they were shed from the surface as part of a plume or if a seismic wave shook them loose. "If we follow the boulders in future Hubble observations, then we may have enough data to pin down the boulders' precise trajectories. And then we'll see in which directions they were launched from the surface," said Jewitt. ®
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