The 2022 DART mission impact rattled the asteroid's surface
Sorry Chicken Little, the sky is not falling — at least not yet.
Wayward asteroids present a real collision hazard to Earth. Scientists estimate that an asteroid measuring several miles across smashed into Earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, among other forms of life, in a mass extinction. Unlike the dinosaurs, humanity can avoid this fate if we begin practicing how to knock an Earth-approaching asteroid off course.
This is trickier than how it has been depicted in science fiction movies like Deep Impact. Planetary scientists first need to know how asteroids were assembled. Are they flying rubble piles of loosely agglomerated rocks, or something more substantial? This information would help provide strategies on how to successfully deflect a menacing asteroid.
As a first step, NASA did an experiment to smash into an asteroid to see how it is perturbed. The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft impact on asteroid Dimorphos happened on September 26, 2022. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope continue following the aftermath of the cosmic collision. A surprise is the discovery of several dozen boulders lifted off the asteroid after the smashup. In Hubble pictures they look like a swarm of bees very slowly moving away from the asteroid. This might mean that smacking an Earth-approaching asteroid might result in a cluster of threatening boulders heading in our direction.
Find additional articles, images, and videos at HubbleSite.org
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