NASA's Dart Changed the Asteroid's Orbital Path

According to NASA, a recent attempt to divert an asteroid's course was successful. Scientists have now established that the Dart probe's collision with Dimorphos, a 160 m (520 ft) diameter space rock, last month changed the latter's orbit. Furthermore, NASA researchers reached this conclusion after taking measurements with various space and Earth-based telescopes. Additionally, the mission's objective was to evaluate a potential tactic for protecting the Earth from threatening objects. Fortunately, Dart's success proves this strategy would work if it were started early enough and the target wasn't too big. Moreover, NASA administrator Bill Nelson remarked, "This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the Universe throws at us." He told reporters, "I believe that NASA has proven that we are serious as a defender of the planet." On another note, the American space agency revealed a wealth of information on Tuesday to back up its assessment, including fresh images from the Hubble Space Telescope and a small Italian satellite, or cubesat, that was approximately 30 miles away from the collision.

A brief on NASA's Dart mission

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) took place some 11 million km (7 million miles) from Earth. At 22,000 km/h (14,000 mph), the refrigerator-sized NASA satellite crashed into Dimorphos, destroying itself in the process.

About Dimorphous

Dimorphous revolves around Didymos, a much larger (780m wide; 2,550ft) object. In addition, the space rock took 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete one circuit of its sibling before impact.

CONFIRMED: Analysis of data obtained over the past 2 weeks by the #DARTMission team shows impact with Dimorphos has successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes - marking the 1st time humans have changed the orbit of a celestial object in space! https://t.co/MjmUAFwVSO pic.twitter.com/4Qiy1mC4gK

— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) October 11, 2022

However, this orbital period reportedly shortened to 11 hours and 23 minutes -reducing by 32 minutes, according to telescope evidence. Therefore, this translates to a "tens of meters" tighter distance between Dimorphos and Didymos - a narrowing of the orbital path.

What do experts say?

Dimorphos' minimum successful period change was 73 seconds or longer, according to NASA. But the statistics made public on Tuesday showed that Dart outperformed this benchmark by more than 25 times. "This is a 4% change in the orbital period of Dimorphos around Didymos. Dart just gave it a small nudge. But if you wanted to do this in the future, you'd want to do it years in advance," noted Dr. Nancy Chabot from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which led the mission for NASA. "Warning time is really key here in order to enable this sort of asteroid deflection to be used in the future as part of a much larger planetary defense strategy." Moreover, Dr. Tom Statler, NASA's Dart program scientist, also issued a warning against drawing too many conclusions from the experiment. "Asteroids came in many different guises. We should not be too eager to say one test on one asteroid tells us exactly how every other asteroid would behave in a similar situation," he remarked. "But what we can do is use this test as an anchor point for our physics calculations in our simulations that tell us how different kinds of impacts in different situations should behave." On an added note, the European Space Agency (ESA) will have three spacecraft - collectively known as the Hera mission - at Didymos and Dimorphos to make follow-up studies four years from now.