When NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, it wasn't only a thrilling test of planetary defense. It was also a unique opportunity for scientists.
When NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid last year, it wasn’t only a thrilling test of planetary defense. It was also a unique opportunity for scientists to observe an asteroid system and see the effects of the crash, letting them learn more about what asteroids are composed of.
Related Videos Studying this ejecta using spectroscopy allowed the researchers to see that the cloud did not contain oxygen or water. “Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any trace of water would have been a real surprise,” said one of the researchers, Cyrielle Opitom, in a statement. Another thing the team searched for was propellant from the spacecraft, but they didn’t find that either.
“When we observe the objects in our Solar System, we are looking at the sunlight that is scattered by their surface or by their atmosphere, which becomes partially polarised,” explained researcher Stefano Bagnulo. “Tracking how the polarisation changes with the orientation of the asteroid relative to us and the Sun reveals the structure and composition of its surface.”
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