SPACE reports that six months following the DART mission slamming a spacecraft into an asteroid, Dimorphos has given NASA scientists time to clarify a profile of the asteroid. Careful scrutiny of the debris “from the impact of NASA’s DART mission into Dimorphos has not found any evidence for water-ice on the asteroid, nor the residue of thruster fuel from the spacecraft, new results from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) show.” However, the data from the MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) “instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile does indicate differences in the size of particles in the debris, and show how the polarization of the light from the asteroid changed.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Tag: Dimorphos
DART Mission Successfully Crashes into Asteroid
The Conversation reports that NASA “has crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to push the rocky traveler off its trajectory.” The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully collided into Dimorphos’ center. The image “taken at 11 seconds before impact and 42 miles (68 kilometers) from Dimorphos shows the asteroid centered in the camera’s field of view.”
Full Story (The Conversation)
Video
NASA’s Official Broadcast of DART’s Impact with Asteroid Dimorphos, September 26, 2022
(NASA; YouTube)