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Illustration from NASA. (Doctor: Andreas H./Pixabay)
NASA’s efforts to adjust the asteroid’s orbital speed in September 2022 had an unexpected impact. The space agency deliberately crashed the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on Dimorphos.
Reported by Extreme Tech, Monday (9/11/2023), Dimorphos is an asteroid located approximately 6.8 million kilometers from Earth.
The operation was successful, but caused some confusion. Instead of maintaining a fixed orbit, Dimorphos’ path around its parent asteroid is narrowing.
Usually, NASA hits an asteroid with the aim of changing its orbital path or speed. But this time, NASA used DART’s 14,000 mph momentum to change the asteroid’s orbit.
DART hit the asteroid Dimorphos with a duration of 11 hours 55 minutes around its parent asteroid (Didymos) on September 26, 22. Then, on October 11, 2022, NASA confirmed that it had shortened its orbit by 32 minutes.
Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said: “With new data every day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether and how missions like DART can be used in the future to help to protect the Earth from collisions with asteroids if we encounter such a phenomenon. asteroid. is heading towards us.
However, recently a middle school teacher and her students discovered that DART’s impact was greater than NASA thought. Jonathan Swift, a professor at the Thatcher School in California, discovered that Dimorphos’ orbit was shrinking.
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