A NASA spacecraft’s impact on an asteroid creates a ‘cloud of rocks’

Create a system “planetary defense” Will the confrontation with asteroids have uncontrollable consequences? a “rock cloud” It was created after the impact of the DART spacecraft on an asteroid, about 11 million kilometers from Earth. This is what the Hubble Space Telescope observed on Thursday, July 20.

The DART mission, which launched in November 2021 for an unprecedented test mission, was a success. The Kamikaze ship did a good job of smashing into the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022. The DART impact did well in changing Dimorphos’ trajectory. But Hubble images show that the impact also released 37 boulders, ranging in size from one meter to more than seven meters.

These rocks represent about 2% of all those identified on the asteroid surface. Dimorphos, with a diameter of 160 meters, looks more like a jumble of large rocks related by their mutual culture than a solid mass.

The European HERA mission will examine the damage in 2026

The impact-scattered rocks are moving away from the asteroid very slowly, at a rate of one kilometer per hour, according to a statement from the Hubble Space Telescope. A slowness that would allow the European Space Agency’s HERA mission to monitor the rocks. You should go there to inspect the asteroid in 2026. “We have Hera who will arrive to complete it […] to give us the effect result […] Without this information, it is hard to explain why we deviate so much.”explained to franceinfo Patrick Michel, director of research at the CNRS, at the Côte d’Azur Observatory, scientific director of the Hera mission.

the cloud “It looks like a swarm of bees slowly stretching out.”notes David Jewett, an astronomer at the University of California and first author of a study on the subject recently published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Scientists will continue to study the trajectory of the rocks to understand them “Which direction were they thrown off the roof?”.