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Asteroid forms a debris cloud after intentional spacecraft impact

Telescopes around the world were watching when a NASA spacecraft intentionally collided with an asteroid in September 2022.

New images released Tuesday by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile reveal detailed images of debris flowing away from the collision created by the DART space probe. Double Asteroid Redirection.

The probe, weighing around 1,200 pounds (544 kg), slammed head-on into the asteroid Dimorphos at 13,000 miles per hour (20,921 kilometers per hour) in an attempt to change the space rock’s speed.

It was the first time humanity had set out to change the motion of a celestial object, and the results showed how this kinetic impact technology could be used to deflect asteroids that might appear to be on a collision course with Earth. Neither Dimorphos nor the larger asteroid it orbits called Didymos pose a threat to Earth.

The DART impact was successful, changing the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos by 33 minutes. This first planetary defense test, which took place 7 million miles (11.3 million kilometers) from Earth, also released tons of material into space.

Two different teams of astronomers used the Very Large Telescope to study the event’s aftermath.

“Asteroid impacts happen naturally, but you never know about it in advance,” said study lead author Cyrielle Opitom, an astronomer and chancellor’s fellow at the University of Edinburgh, in a statement. “DART is a great opportunity to study a controlled impact, almost like in a laboratory.”

Opitom and his fellow researchers tracked the cloud of debris that resulted from the collision for a month using the telescope’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument, also called MUSE.

The cloud of rock and debris initially detonated from the surface of Dimorphos appeared to be made of fine particles. Days later, the team spied other structures in the debris cloud, such as clumps and spirals of larger particles, as well as a long, comet-like tail flowing behind the asteroid.

The MUSE instrument allowed the researchers to look at the cloud through a rainbow of light to look for telltale signatures of chemicals and gases. But the team could not detect water or oxygen.

“Asteroids are not expected to contain significant amounts of ice, so detecting any traces of water would have been a real surprise,” said Opitom.

The team also kept an eye out for any traces of the DART spacecraft itself, including the propellant it used to travel to the asteroid.

“We knew it was unlikely, as the amount of gas that would be left in the propulsion system tanks would not be huge. Also, some of it would have traveled too far to detect it with MUSE by the time we started observing,” he said.

Other recent research has included a “film” captured by the Hubble Space Telescope showing the evolution of the asteroid’s new tail and how many tons of material were sprayed into space on impact.

Source: CNN Brasil

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