New measurements revealed that the collision experiment carried out by the US space agency NASA within the DART mission not only resulted in changing the orbit of a small asteroid around its companion, but also led to modifying the entire orbital path of the two asteroid system during their movement around the sun.
In 2022, NASA conducted an unprecedented experiment when it sent a spacecraft to deliberately collide with the asteroid Dimorphos, the small moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos, in order to test the possibility of changing the path of asteroids in space as part of efforts to protect Earth from any possible collision in the future.
Preliminary results showed the success of the mission, after the collision reduced the orbital period of Demorphos around Didymos by about 33 minutes, which is a much greater change than scientists expected before implementing the experiment.
But recent analyzes have shown that the impact of the collision was broader than that, as it was not limited to changing the movement of the small asteroid around its companion, but it also caused a slight modification of the path of the entire system of the two asteroids as they orbited around the sun.
This is because the collision of the DART vehicle with the small asteroid led to the scattering of quantities of debris into space, which transferred part of the momentum away from the system, which gave the two asteroids a small boost that changed their orbital speed slightly.
Data collected by scientists showed that this effect slowed the system’s orbital speed by only about 11.7 micrometers per second, which is a very small number, but it may accumulate over time to make a noticeable difference in the asteroid’s position in space.
Within about ten years, this change may reach approximately 3.7 kilometers, which means that such a small push may be enough to push a dangerous asteroid away from Earth if it is discovered early.
Future space missions, such as the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, are expected to provide more detailed information about the effects of the collision, as they will study the impact crater and the structure and mass of the two asteroids more precisely.
This achievement represents an important step in the development of planetary defense technologies, as the experiment demonstrated for the first time the ability of humans to change the path of a natural body moving in the solar system.
