NASA's DART spacecraft took out over 1,000 tons of rock from its target asteroid
Apparently, one of DART's solar panels hit Dimosphos first before its body fully collided with the rock at 6km per second . The spacecraft smashed into the asteroid around 25 meters from its center, which was a huge factor in the mission's success, since it maximized the force of the impact.
According to the studies, the collision had managed to eject 1 million kilograms or 1,100 tons of rock from Dimorphos. That spray of rubble flew outwards away from the asteroid, generating four times the momentum of DART's impact and changing Dimorphos' trajectory even further. While NASA has only tested the mission on one space rock, the scientists have concluded that for asteroids as big as Dimorphos , we don't even need to send an advance reconnaissance mission. As long as we get at least few years of warning time, though a few decades would be preferable, then we will be able to intercept future asteroid threads. Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told:"[W]e can quickly design a mission to deflect an asteroid if there is a threat, and we know that this has a very high chance of being effective."You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu.
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