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Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos has been shrinking ever since its collision with DART last September.
NASA’s attempt to adjust the speed of an asteroid’s orbit has had some unintended consequences. Just under a year ago, the agency intentionally crashed DART—its Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft—into Dimorphos, an asteroid roughly 6.8 million miles away from Earth. The operation was successful but led to something baffling: Instead of maintaining a steady orbit, Dimorphos’ course around its parent asteroid has been shrinking.
It isn’t that the asteroid reacted to being hit that’s the problem. When NASA smacks asteroids, it’s usually to change their trajectory or alter the speed at which they orbit. In this case, the agency used DART’s 14,000-miles-per-hour momentum to alter Dimorphos’ 11-hour-and-55-minute orbit around Didymos, its parent asteroid. DART struck Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022; on Oct. 11, NASA confirmed it had shortened the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.
“As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said following the operation’s success.
However, according to a high school teacher and his students, DART’s impact had even more downstream effects than NASA could have predicted. Jonathan Swift, who teaches at California’s Thatcher School, helped his students use the campus observatory to track DART’s results. Together, they found that Dimorphos’ orbit was shrinking: A month after DART’s collision with the asteroid, Dimorphos was circling Didymos two minutes faster than it did immediately after impact.
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NASA’s attempt to adjust the speed of an asteroid’s orbit has had some unintended consequences. Just under a year ago, the agency intentionally crashed DART—its Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft—into Dimorphos, an asteroid roughly 6.8 million miles away from Earth. The operation was successful but led to something baffling: Instead of maintaining a steady orbit, Dimorphos’ course around its parent asteroid has been shrinking.
It isn’t that the asteroid reacted to being hit that’s the problem. When NASA smacks asteroids, it’s usually to change their trajectory or alter the speed at which they orbit. In this case, the agency used DART’s 14,000-miles-per-hour momentum to alter Dimorphos’ 11-hour-and-55-minute orbit around Didymos, its parent asteroid. DART struck Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022; on Oct. 11, NASA confirmed it had shortened the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.
“As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said following the operation’s success.
However, according to a high school teacher and his students, DART’s impact had even more downstream effects than NASA could have predicted. Jonathan Swift, who teaches at California’s Thatcher School, helped his students use the campus observatory to track DART’s results. Together, they found that Dimorphos’ orbit was shrinking: A month after DART’s collision with the asteroid, Dimorphos was circling Didymos two minutes faster than it did immediately after impact.
Asteroid Orbits 'Unexpectedly' After Being Hit By NASA’s DART
Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos has been shrinking ever since its collision with DART last September.
