NASA’s asteroid defence mission slowed targets by 1.7 inches per hour

NASA has published new analysis of its 2022 planetary defense test that suggests the mission slowed down the target asteroids, albeit infinitesimally.

The aerospace agency named its 2022 experiment the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which readers may remember saw a 570kg spacecraft sent to collide with a 170-metre-wide asteroid named Dimorphos that orbits a larger space rock named Didymos. The aim of the mission was to investigate the feasibility of diverting an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth.

Analysis of the mission found the collision moved Dimorphos closer to Didymos, and reduced the duration of the smaller rock’s orbit. Astroboffins who peered at the asteroids using the Hubble Space Telescope also spotted 37 boulders orbiting Dimorphos after DART struck.

Last Friday, the journal Science Advances published fresh analysis of the DART mission titled “Direct detection of an asteroid’s heliocentric deflection: The Didymos system after DART.”

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