A team of researchers conducted simulations in which 3 million people were observed. Debris Particles from a Double Asteroid Targeting Test (eng. Double Asteroid Redirection TestDART) missions, during which in 2022 the spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos.
NASA hopes that this experiment will one day help save humanity from a celestial body that could destroy life on our planet.
The DART mission was successful, but simulations showed that the resulting debris could one day reach Mars and the Earth-Moon system in the form of meteors.
If these meteors reach Earth, they will pose no threat to our planet. “Because of their small size and high speed, they will burn up in the atmosphere, creating a ‘beautiful bright band in the sky,'” says Eloy Peña-Asensio, a scientist at the Polytechnic Institute of Milan in Italy and lead author of the study.
DART was launched from California (USA) in 2021. in November – and finally completed its 10-month journey when the 2022 collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in September.
About 170 m in diameter, the asteroid Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos, both of which are about 10.9 million km from our planet.
DART hit an asteroid at a speed greater than 22.5 thousand. km per hour and was destroyed on impact, while Dimorphos received a “slight boost” that changed its trajectory slightly.
The mission showed that the technique of having a spacecraft slam into an asteroid is an effective way to change the trajectory of the asteroid’s orbit.
If a potentially dangerous asteroid (eng. Potentially Hazardous AsteroidPHA) would move toward Earth, NASA could one day use this method to save our planet.
But scientists are still studying the aftermath of DART to make sure NASA can safely target the asteroid. Therefore, an international team of researchers wanted to find out where the debris from the collision between the spacecraft and the asteroid could go.
The team relied on data collected by the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) spacecraft, which documented the collision.
Next, the researchers used NASA supercomputers to model what might happen to the resulting debris.
The debris fragments analyzed by the team are small, ranging from 30 micrometers to 10 centimeters in size.
The results showed that some of the debris could reach Earth within a decade, depending on how fast it moves after impact.
For example, debris moving faster than 5400 km/h. speed, could reach Earth in about seven years.
However, simulations have shown that it will likely be up to 30 years before at least one of these pieces of debris is visible from Earth because “the faster particles will be too small to form visible meteors,” Peña-Asensio said.
The study is published on arXiv.
Adapted from the Daily Mail.
2024-08-26 15:44:35