Confirmed: Asteroid orbit really was altered by Earth crash probe DART
the DART collision would shorten Dimorphos' orbit by ten minutes, but it actually shortened it by 32 minutes. Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said this result was within the range of possibilities predicted by models. She added that the deflection effect was enhanced due to Dimorphos shedding rocky material from its surface during impact.
"This is a four percent change in the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos, and it just gave it a small nudge," Chabot said."But if you wanted to do this in the future, it could potentially work but you'd want to do it years in advance. Warning time is really key here in order to enable this sort of asteroid deflection to potentially be used in the future and as part of a much larger planetary defense strategy.
The European Space Agency will launch Hera, a separate mission sending a spacecraft and two cubesats to study the aftermath of DART's collision in closer detail in 2024. "All of us have a responsibility to protect our own planet," Nelson added."After all, it's the only one we have. And this mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us." ®
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