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Will DART slamming into an asteroid's moon cause it to tumble chaotically? - SYFY WIRE

Will DART slamming into an asteroid's moon cause it to tumble chaotically? - SYFY WIRE

Will DART slamming into an asteroid's moon cause it to tumble chaotically? - SYFY WIRE
Sep 13, 2021 1 min, 30 secs

A new paper just published, interestingly, notes that the impact could have a previously unforeseen outcome, causing the moon to start tumbling as it orbits the parent asteroid.

Radar observations of the asteroid Didymos (large object) taken over four days during a close approach in 2003 show it’s orbited by a smaller moon, Dimorphos (bright dot).

The asteroid in question is a binary system, a big rock 780 meters wide called Didymos orbited by a smaller 160-meter moon called Dimorphos*.

A diagram of the binary asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos orbit before and after impact.

This sort of idea has been around a long time — called a “kinetic impactor”, I mention it in a TED talk I gave a few years back — and was even implemented in the Deep Impact mission that slammed into a small comet in 2005.

The orbit will only change a little, but the moon itself could start to change its orientation as it orbits.

Comparison of the size of the DART spacecraft, the asteroid Didymos, and its moon Dimorphos to various landmarks.

For one the European Space Agency is flying a follow-up mission called Hera to the asteroid.

There’s a complicated interaction between an object’s spin and its orbit due to tides (for example, Earth’s tides are causing our own Moon to recede from us by about 4 cm per year), so as the tides from Didymos act on Dimorphos the moon might recede or approach its parent, depending on the exact conditions of the tumbling.

Although the change will be small, it may be measurable over time (like, many years).

Artwork showing the DART mission moments before it impacts Dimorphos, the small moon of the asteroid Didymos?

*Didymos means “twin” in Greek, and Dimorphos means “having two forms”, which represents the orbit will change after impact

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