Hubble Detects Strange Changes In The Dust Of An Asteroid That Was Subjected To A Deliberate Collision During The “DART” Mission
Hubble Detects Strange Changes In The Dust Of An Asteroid That Was Subjected To A Deliberate Collision During The “DART” Mission 1-194
The famous Hubble Space Telescope has tracked the dramatic hour-by-hour changes in deep space caused by the deliberate collision of a NASA probe with a space rock last September.
NASA's Double Asteroid Reorientation Ability Test (DART) mission collided with the small asteroid called Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, and the mission is to test the technique of changing the course of a dangerous asteroid heading towards Earth, although this asteroid was not in Collision course with Earth There are no imminent threats from a space rock to our planet, according to the US space agency.
New images from the Hubble Space Telescope, revealed on March 1, show dust and debris flying at high speed away from Dimorphos and its larger companion, Didymus, after the DART impact.
It is believed that the collision threw about 1,000 tons of ancient asteroid material into space.

"We've never seen an object collide with an asteroid in a binary asteroid system before in real time, which is something we've never seen before," said Jian Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, in a statement issued by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which manages the Hubble science program. Really surprising, I think it's great. A lot of things are going on here, and it will take some time to figure that out.”
The new images were accompanied by a study led by Lee in collaboration with 63 other members of the DART team, published in the journal Nature. The paper is one of five published in Nature Wednesday, which together provide a detailed overview of the impact and consequences of the DART mission.
Information based on Hubble's work indicates at least three stages in the evolution of the Dimorphos wreck.
First the debris spread out in a conical shape, then it wrapped around the asteroid's orbit, and finally the tail moved behind the asteroid because of the pressure of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that continually flows from our sun.
And NASA released a clip compiling images captured by the Hubble telescope during a period that began more than an hour before the collision and ended on October 8.
Hubble Detects Strange Changes In The Dust Of An Asteroid That Was Subjected To A Deliberate Collision During The “DART” Mission 1-193
The Hubble "film" begins with footage from about 1.3 hours after the collision, showing Dimorphos and companion Didymus at a distance such that the two space rocks could not be separated individually. About two hours after the event, debris can be seen moving at speeds in excess of 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h), fast enough to overcome the gravitational pull of the asteroid system.
The conical shape began to form about 17 hours after the collision.
"The most prominent structures are rotating pinwheel-shaped features that are associated with the gravitational pull of the companion asteroid, Didymus," STScI officials wrote in the statement.
And officials of the Space Telescope Science Institute added that the final stage shows debris sweeping behind the asteroid, "as lighter particles travel faster and farther from the asteroid."
But the processes are not yet understood, as Hubble saw the tail split into two streams for a few days and the mechanism by which this happened is not clear.

Numerous instruments on Earth and in space have imaged the DART effect, and more results will come from these various investigations in the future, as the data is analyzed, understood and processed.




Source : websites