Telescopes indicate that NASA’s planetary defense test was successful

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The unprecedented test of “Save the Earth” organized by NASA earlier this week was followed, in real time, by scientists and spectators from around the world and also by the two major observatories of the US Space Agency: the James Webb and Hubble telescopes. . Last week, the first images captured by the device were released – which, for the first time, simultaneously spotted the same celestial target. She notes that the impact may have been greater than expected, reinforcing expectations that the mission had achieved its goal.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched last November to smash into Demorphos 11 million kilometers from Earth and, with the impact, alter the asteroid’s path. The collision occurred as planned. Now, the data collected by the telescopes will help the team to conclude whether or not the aberration occurred. According to Ian Carnell of the European Space Agency (ESA), the images show an impact “much larger than expected”.

“I was really worried because there was nothing left of Demorphos,” Carnelly admitted to AFP. The European Space Agency will launch the Hera mission, scheduled for October 2024, to reach the asteroid in 2026 and assess the crater. It was expected to have a diameter of about 10 meters. With the images taken by telescopes, Carneli says, plans have changed. “It looks like it would be much bigger if there was a crater. Part of Demorphos may have been cut off,” he wonders.

On Monday (26), DART, which was the size of a passenger car, hit an asteroid with a diameter of 160 meters, the equivalent of four Christ the Redeemer, at a speed of more than 20,000 km / h. Demorphos was 1 km from the asteroid Didymos, 780 meters long, and orbited it in 11 hours 55 minutes. Expectations are that with shock, this time will be reduced by 10 minutes.

Earth-connected telescopes and radars will likely take at least a week to get a preliminary estimate of how much the asteroid’s orbit has changed. To get an accurate measurement, Carnegie says the time frame is three or four weeks. “I expect a much bigger deviation than we planned,” the project manager for the Hera mission admits.

An astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast, Alan Fitzsimmons, claims that even if no matter had been “kicked out” from Dimorphos, DART would have slightly affected its orbit. “But the higher the material and the faster it moves, the greater the deflection,” he explains.

Miscellaneous data

According to NASA, images taken by telescopes showed a huge cloud of dust expanding out of Demorphos and Didymus. The agency said in a statement that Webb took five hours to record and took 10 photos. One shows “piles of material appearing as wicks emerging from the center of the impact site.” “This is an unprecedented view of an unprecedented event,” summed up Andy Rifkin, lead researcher for the DART research team at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel.

The Hubble images – 22 minutes, five and eight hours after the unprecedented impact – show the expanding material spraying from where DART crashed. “When I saw the data, I was astonished by the incredible details of the ejecta captured by Hubble,” said Jian Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who led the telescope’s observations.

The equipment picked up the effect at different wavelengths of light – Webb in the infrared and Hubble in the visible. This diversity of data will allow scientists to access details of the impact, such as the distribution of particle sizes in the dust cloud and whether large parts of the rocky body or fine particles were released.

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