Skip to main content

Remember the DART impact? Hubble Made a Movie of the Debris

When NASA crashed a 610 kg (1,340 lb) impactor into tiny Dimorphos, a moon of the asteroid Didymos, it was all part of an effort to defend Earth. The impact showed how asteroids respond to impacts, and the data is helping NASA prepare for the day when we have to redirect an asteroid away from an eventual impact with Earth.

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) smashed into Dimorphos on the 26th of September, 2022, and ground telescopes watched the result.

DART was a success. The impact lowered Dimorphos’ orbital speed and reduced its orbital radius. DART also changed Didymos’ trajectory and excavated a crater on the Dimorphos’ surface that ejected more than 900,000 kg (990 US tons) of debris into space.

The Hubble Space Telescope got in on the action and captured images several hours apart until about 18 days after the impact.

There’s a little bit of mystery in the debris. At first, debris moves away from the impact in straight lines. It’s travelling at about 6.5 kph (4 mph.) That’s fast enough to escape Dimorphos’ weak gravity and prevent it from falling back to the surface. The debris takes on a cone shape with long filaments. (The straight spikes coming from the center of the images are Hubble optic artifacts.)

Immediately after impact, the debris formed a cone shape with long, stringy filaments. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Li (PSI)
Immediately after impact, the debris formed a cone shape with long, stringy filaments. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Li (PSI)

17 hours after the impact, the debris changes. In this second stage, the gravitational interactions between Didymos and Dimorphos start to distort the ejecta’s cone shape. Rotating, pin-wheeled features form, their rotation anchored to Didymos’ gravitational pull.

A few hours after the impact, gravity starts to warp the ejecta stream. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Li (PSI)
A few hours after the impact, gravity starts to warp the ejecta stream. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Li (PSI)

Next, the debris is swept back into a shape like a comet’s tail by the Sun’s radiative pressure on the tiny particles in the ejecta. The debris stretches out further, with the lightest particles the furthest from the asteroid. Then, mysteriously, the debris tail breaks into two tails.

After a few days, the Sun started to affect the debris. The Sun’s radiative pressure stretched the debris out into a comet-tail-like stream. Eventually, the stream split into two. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Li (PSI)

The Hubble people created a time-lapse movie of the impact and the aftermath. The movie begins about 1.5 hours before the impact and ended 18 days post-impact.

NASA and the ESA aren’t done with DART, Didymos, and Dimorphos yet. In 2024, the ESA will launch their Hera mission, which will arrive at Didymos in December 2026. Hera will undertake a detailed study of Dimorphos to understand more deeply how the impact affected it. Hera will help turn the DART mission into data we can use to protect ourselves from asteroid impacts.

This artist's illustration shows the ESA's Hera spacecraft performing close proximity operations at Didymos. The mission will launch in 2024 and reach the double-asteroid in December 2026. Image Credit: By ESA – Science Office, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90615537
This artist’s illustration shows the ESA’s Hera spacecraft performing close proximity operations at Didymos. The mission will launch in 2024 and reach the double-asteroid in December 2026. Image Credit: By ESA – Science Office, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo, https://ift.tt/Ad2snBo

Hera is also a technology demonstration mission. It’ll test things like autonomous navigation around an asteroid and low-gravity proximity operations. The mission will also be the first to rendezvous with a double asteroid.

The post Remember the DART impact? Hubble Made a Movie of the Debris appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/CeiNRcV
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Data and Machine Learning has Kicked SETI Into High Gear

For over sixty years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This consists of listening to other star systems for signs of technological activity (or “technosignatures), such as radio transmissions. This first attempt was in 1960, known as Project Ozma, where famed SETI researcher Dr. Frank Drake (father of the Drake Equation) and his colleagues used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to conduct a radio survey of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. Since then, the vast majority of SETI surveys have similarly looked for narrowband radio signals since they are very good at propagating through interstellar space. However, the biggest challenge has always been how to filter out radio transmissions on Earth – aka. radio frequency interference (RFI). In a recent study, an international team led by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DIAA) applied a new deep-learning algorithm to data collecte...
Post a Comment
Read more

eROSITA Sees Changes in the Most Powerful Quasar

After almost seventy years of study, astronomers are still fascinated by active galactic nuclei (AGN), otherwise known as quasi-stellar objects (or “quasars.”) These are the result of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of massive galaxies, which cause gas and dust to fall in around them and form accretion disks. The material in these disks is accelerated to close to the speed of light, causing it to release tremendous amounts of radiation in the visible, radio, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and X-ray wavelengths. In fact, quasars are so bright that they temporarily outshine every star in their host galaxy’s disk combined. The brightest quasar observed to date, 100,000 billion times as luminous as our Sun, is known as SMSS J114447.77-430859.3 (J1144). This AGN is hosted by a galaxy located roughly 9.6 billion light years from Earth between the constellations Centaurus and Hydra. Using data from the eROSITA All Sky Survey and other space telescopes, an international t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Planetary Surfaces: Why study them? Can they help us find life elsewhere?

Universe Today recently explored the importance of studying impact craters and what they can teach us about finding life beyond Earth. Impact craters are considered one of the many surface processes—others include volcanism, weathering, erosion, and plate tectonics—that shape surfaces on numerous planetary bodies, with all of them simultaneously occurring on Earth. Here, we will explore how and why planetary scientists study planetary surfaces, the challenges faced when studying other planetary surfaces, what planetary surfaces can teach us about finding life, and how upcoming students can pursue studying planetary surfaces, as well. So, why is it so important to study planetary surfaces throughout the solar system? “Planetary surfaces record the history of the Solar System, a history that’s almost entirely lost to us here on Earth,” Dr. Paul Byrne, who is an Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tells  Uni...
Post a Comment
Read more