Dart Hits Dimorphos!

ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Been paying attention to this... curious to find out if they managed to affect the rock much more than just crashing a "vending machine" into it.

Still pretty flippin' cool. ;)
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Yeah, my thoughts exactly, besides knowing they can hit one now, what kind of data did they get from it?

 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly, besides knowing they can hit one now, what kind of data did they get from it?

The data will come in the days and weeks ahead, when it will be determined if the crash has affected the orbit io Dimorphos, and by how much.


Dr. Paul Abell is the son of Drs. Bob and Mattie Abell, who were colleagues of mine in my time in Manitoba. They came out from Huddersfield UK, and now make their home in White Rock BC. Dr. Paul Abell is a graduate of the John Odegaard School of Aerospace Science at the University of ND, Grand Forks ND. He heads up the Asteroid program at NASA. The object is to develop a plan to alter the trajectory of an asteroid threatening Earth.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I guess if they hit it pretty far out, it wouldn't take much of a change to direct it out of a harmful path. It seems a bit mild of a plan to just throw very expensive stuff at asteroids.

Maybe we can send a Tesla next time.

Dart weighted 363 Kg, (800 lb.) and crashed into Dimorphos at 22,500 kph (14,000mph). That gives it a momentum of 5000 SI. (5000 kg.m/sec). That is a lot of momentum.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
How much do they estimate the asteroid weighted though? There's no telling, it could be dense or light. We will see in the coming days how much its trajectory was altered.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
How much do they estimate the asteroid weighted though? There's no telling, it could be dense or light. We will see in the coming days how much its trajectory was altered.
We will know that by how much the trajectory is altered. The weight of Dimorphos is anybody's guess. That is the whole point of the experiment. Since the momentum of the space craft is known, the weight of Dimorphos can be calculated, unless it is so heavy the impact does not alter its orbit enough to be observed.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Then we'll have to shoot a nuke at one if it doesn't change it much. Think it might be time for a rewatch of Armageddon :)
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Been paying attention to this... curious to find out if they managed to affect the rock much more than just crashing a "vending machine" into it.

Still pretty flippin' cool. ;)
At 14K MPH and weighing 1300 pounds, the Kinetic Energy would be >45 billion Joules and that's a lot of energy. At a distance of 100 million miles from Earth, it would be able to cause its path to deviate enough to miss.
 
R

rnatalli

Audioholic Ninja
Watched this live yesterday; really cool! Here's hoping it actually worked.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
This pair of asteroids were not a threat was my understanding. This was just a test to see if they could do it rather than wait to figure out if it works on something that is actually dangerous.
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
This pair of asteroids were not a threat was my understanding. This was just a test to see if they could do it rather than wait to figure out if it works on something that is actually dangerous.
correct.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Post impact, taken from the companion craft. Dimorphos on the left with the ejected material from the impact.


 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
This pair of asteroids were not a threat was my understanding. This was just a test to see if they could do it rather than wait to figure out if it works on something that is actually dangerous.
As they should. God forbid we have to send a bunch of rough necks to an asteroid to drill on it or something stupid like that. I love that NASA shows that movie to newbies and ask them how many things were wrong with the movie. Hilarious.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Post impact, taken from the companion craft. Dimorphos on the left with the ejected material from the impact.


Was wondering about whether there was a separate craft taking pics....does kinda look like something kept going....was more assuming it was the asteroid, tho?
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
Was wondering about whether there was a separate craft taking pics....does kinda look like something kept going....was more assuming it was the asteroid, tho?
It will take 2 yrs for the next set of satellites to get there to do an actual investigation of the asteroid.

To me it almost looks like it passed through it, or at least debris passed through. DART apparently dropped a little camera satellite once it got close and that captured some shots, but they didn't want it too close because it might get damaged by debris. They are still analyzing the images from that second satellite.

The video is from a telescope.
 
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