NASA's DART mission punched an asteroid last year and analysis now shows that the plume of gas and dust that resulted tripled the momentum transferred from the spacecraft to the craggy little rock
If we ever need to use something like DART to deflect an asteroid that’s heading towards Earth, understanding that extra push will be crucial. “Ejecta is going to give a larger push to the asteroid than the spacecraft itself, so that means in the future if we have to use this technology to divert an asteroid from hitting Earth, then we don’t necessarily need a huge spacecraft,” saysThe plume of ejecta also puts Dimorphos in a strange category of asteroids called, which have tails like comets.
“We can now really nail down what’s going on with active asteroids, and that helps us figure out what they’re made of, which ties back to the birth of the solar system when they formed,” saysAfter DART, we know that we can change the trajectory of a small asteroid like Dimorphos, but all asteroids are different so we can’t be sure that a similar mission would work on anything that might be headed our way.
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