They are analyzing the structure of material ejected by the asteroid Dimorphos during the DART mission.

Alicante (Spain), February 28 (EFE) – A paper published in the journal Nature analyzes the structure of the cloud of debris and dust (plume) ejected by the asteroid Dimorphos after the impact of the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft. ., a NASA planetary defense test in which the planetary sciences group of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Group of the University of Alicante (SA) (East) is collaborating.

The DART mission on September 26, 2022, sent a half-ton spacecraft shooting at 22,000 km/h toward Dimorphos, a moon of the Didymos asteroid near Earth, in the first-ever planetary defense experiment, successfully changing its trajectory. .

A year and a half later, under the watchful eye of the LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Asteroid Imaging) spacecraft of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), an international team of researchers led by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica-INAF (Italy), in which UA Physics Professor Adriano Campo Bagatin participates , offers another snapshot of what happened in the seconds after impact.

According to the UA statement, LICIACube, which accompanied the DART mission, sent data directly before and after the impact to Earth and received 426 images of the resulting effects.

Elisabetta Dotto, INAF researcher and first author of the paper, reports that “the science phase began 71 seconds before the DART impact, witnessing a live measurement of the rapid change in brightness of a small asteroid.”

Moving at about 6.1 km/s (kilometers per second), LICIACube circled the object, reaching a distance of just 58 kilometers at its closest point to Dimorphos 174 seconds after impact.

But how has Dimorphos changed since the advent of DART? “What was surprising was that the surface of this moon was no longer visible due to the ejected material, as we predicted with UA in a previous study published before DART’s arrival in collaboration with researchers from Uruguay and the US Institute for Astrophysics. Andalusia IAA (Granada),” explained the UA professor.

“In addition to witnessing a unique asteroid deflection event due to a kinetic impact, detailed images of the impact’s aftermath were obtained. In fact, we were able to better understand how these small asteroids react to collisions and, thanks to them, derive information about the nature of these objects,” he said.

We must not forget, Campo Bagatín explained, that this mission is part of a strategy to reduce the risk of asteroid impacts.

DART and LICIACube, together with the European Space Agency’s Hera space mission, which launches this October, “will provide a complete picture of the physical characteristics and structure of the bodies that make up this binary asteroid,” he noted. .

“This will allow us to interpret the results of the Dimorphos impact in a timely manner. On the other hand, given that asteroids are what remains from an intermediate stage of the process that led to the formation of planets, the data obtained provide important information in the study of the first stages of aggregation of material that makes up the Solar System,” he added.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature, the material ejected from the impact crater formed a cone with an opening angle of about 140 degrees and a complex and heterogeneous structure, characterized by filaments, dust grains and individual or grouped fragments, even several meters in size, ejected into as a result of a dart strike.

The images show that the innermost part of the cone was bluish in color and gradually became more reddish as the distance from Dimorphos increased. Velocities of ejected material varied from a few tens of m/s (meters per second) to approximately 500 m/s, although there is evidence that large quantities of material were also ejected at speeds of several tens of cm/s.

“The results obtained by the Italian mission are important on a scientific level for the international community, as they are the only images collected “in situ” from the first planetary defense mission carried out to date. We are currently collaborating in the field of physical research. interpretation of some characteristics shown in the images that have not yet been satisfactorily explained,” emphasized Campo Bagatin. EFE

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