The Japanese Space Agency plans to launch its DESTINY+ mission to the near-Earth asteroid “Phaethon” in 2024 to reach the space stone in 2028, as quoted by RT.
To achieve this mission, this “dangerous” asteroid has been intensively studied. Scientists recently made an exciting discovery about Phaethon, its rotation accelerating.
The asteroid’s rotation period decreases by 4 milliseconds per year. And even a small change like this could affect important DESTINY+ notes in the future.
Knowing the exact spin rate allows the team to more accurately predict the orientation of the asteroid during the spacecraft’s flight, which in turn allows the team to be more specific in their observations.
An asteroid’s rotation rarely changes, and “Phaethon” is the eleventh known asteroid to show a change in its rotational period.
Using data and observations from 1989 to 2021, Sean Marshall, a planetary scientist at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, created a model to determine the shape of Phaethon in preparation for the DESTINY+ mission.
Marshall found that the predictions from his model did not match the data because the times when the model was brightest were out of sync with when Phaethon was actually observed as brightest.
“I realized that this could be explained by a slight change in Phaethon’s rotation period sometime before the 2021 observations.”
Marshall found that the model best suited to the data involves constant rotational acceleration. In other words, it involves periodically reducing Python’s spin period by 4 milliseconds per year.
“This is good news for the DESTINY+ team because the constant change means that the direction of Phaethon at the time of the spacecraft’s flight can be accurately predicted, so they will know which areas the sun will illuminate,” Marshall said.
Scientists are still learning about Python, and the DESTINY+ mission is sure to reveal more.
Remarkably, Phaethon is large enough and close enough to Earth to be called a “potentially dangerous asteroid”, even though it does not actually pose a direct threat to our planet.
Although it currently poses no danger to Earth, a slight change in the path of the asteroid, which is about 5.8 kilometers wide, could bring it close enough to sufficiently change its orbit, which lasts 524 days. Which could lead scientists to reconsider their concerns about it.
The researchers presented the findings at the 54th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences in London, Ontario earlier this month.