A citizen scientist has provided a new perspective on what happened when NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid.
An amateur image processor using a bank of recently released RAW images. jacinto roger perez has compiled a series of stable videos of the DART spacecraft impacting the asteroid Dimorphos, giving us a new perspective and appreciation of this amazing event.
DART – stands for Double asteroid redirection test – It was an experiment in which a spacecraft was used to change the course of an asteroid. The purpose of the exercise was to determine humanity’s ability to deflect an asteroid that could potentially hit Earth.
#darts Mission#LICIACube – #Luke –
the goal: #Didimos #dimorphosNASA/ASI/j. Roger pic.twitter.com/S8Jqoqv4d7
— Landru79 (@landru79) November 3, 2023
The targets were a pair of asteroids orbiting each other. The larger one is called Didymos, with a diameter of 780 meters (2,560 feet), and the smaller one is called Dimorphos, with a diameter of 160 meters (525 feet). Dimorphos more or less orbited this large rock once every 11.9 hours.
For the DART mission to succeed, the collision would have to alter Dimopoulos’ orbit and change its orbital period.
The impact occurred in September 2022, and resulted in a spectacular event in which tendrils of ejecta erupted from Dimorphos as DART disintegrated at high speed on the rocky rubble surface.
el impact#darts Mission#LICIACube #leia
the goal: #Didimos #dimorphosNASA/ASI/j. Roger https://t.co/5DhATiE6KQ pic.twitter.com/YBBsmkQVMQ
— Landru79 (@landru79) November 5, 2023
The collision was observed by the Italian Space Agency. lisia cube, an observation spacecraft carried by DART and deployed to remotely record before the impact. LICIACube was equipped with his two cameras that recorded the event, collecting data that will help domestic scientists understand the effects of the asteroid impact.
It is a raw image of LICIAcube, Newly released to the public onlyPerez processed it and compiled it into a number of videos, which he now posts on his X account. landru79.
Inside, we see a giant snaking thread of dust that has erupted from Dimorphos’s surface and is much larger than scientists expected.the shock released Over 1 million km Material from the small asteroid (2.2 million pounds) came together and created a tail that grew its length. Over 10,000km Over the next several months (6,214 miles).
el impact#darts Mission#LICIACube #leia + #Luke
the goal: #Didimos #dimorphosNASA/ASI/j. Roger pic.twitter.com/ohOA6UiEWx
— Landru79 (@landru79) November 5, 2023
The impact succeeded in changing the direction of the asteroid, but not for all the reasons scientists thought. The orbital period was shortened by 33 minutes, a much more significant change than expected and not fully explained by momentum transfer from the DART spacecraft.
Rather, the scientists found that the ejection of material from Dimorphos, which continued for several weeks after the impact, was responsible for most of the asteroid’s orbital changes. The escaping dust transferred much more momentum than the impact itself.
#darts Mission#LICIACube – #Luke -RGB
the goal: #Didimos #dimorphosNASA/ASI/N. Mendez/J. Roger pic.twitter.com/F0EXWOhQf4
— Landru79 (@landru79) November 4, 2023
This result means that not only can humans successfully alter the course of an asteroid millions of kilometers away, but we also need to consider the asteroid’s composition when planning such missions. Loose rubble rocks may be able to reorient better than those with rigid structures that do not lose as much material.
Johns Hopkins University has a website where you can: See DART’s mission and results. If you want to try image processing with LICIcube, You can download it here. And if you’re on X, hop on over and follow Perez. Check out the rest of the videos from the DART mission.