NASA wanted to see whether a kinetic impact would be enough to change the motion of a celestial object in space, some compare it to the plot of 'Armageddon.'
Neither Dimorphos or the large parent space rock it orbits, known as Didymos, pose a danger to Earth.
Astronomers have used ground-based telescopes to monitor the impact's aftermath for nearly two years, and they determined that the DART spacecraft did successfully change the way Dimorphos moves, shifting the moonlet asteroid's orbital period - or how long it takes to make a single revolution around Didymos - by about 32 to 33 minutes.
"They would disintegrate in the upper atmosphere through a process known as ablation, caused by friction with the air at hypervelocity," he said. "There is no possibility of a Dimorphos material reaching Earth's surface." The research team used LICIACube data and the supercomputing facilities of the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia to simulate the trajectory of 3 million particles that the impact created. The computer modeling measured different possible pathways and velocities of the particles across the solar system as well as how radiation released by the sun might affect the motion of the particles.
The study authors consider the possibility of the Dimorphids meteor shower reaching Earth unlikely, but they can't rule it out, Peña Asensio said. And if it did occur, it would be a small, faint meteor shower.
Nasa Dart Armageddon Dimorphos Nasa Crashed Into Asteroid
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