DART Mission to Deflect an Asteroid: A First Test of Probing the Earth and the Planetary Environment Using Ground-Based Telescopes

Last September, the world watched in delight as NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of planetary defense. The idea of the DART mission was to see whether an impact from a spacecraft could change the trajectory of an incoming asteroid in case such a looming disaster ever threatened the Earth.

There were images taken as DART approached Dimorphos, showing an asteroid covered in boulders. It looks like a pile of rubble which is held together by gravity and will likely shatter when DART hits it.

Dimorphos is larger than Didymos and is 161 metres wide. NASA’s goal was to alter Dimorphos’s orbit enough for astronomers to spot the changes by monitoring the brightness of the pair over time using ground-based telescopes. No asteroid will ever be a threat to Earth.

The discovery of more info is helping scientists understand why the impact was such a success, says Carolyn Ernst, a planetary scientist.

The results could be applicable to future hazards because NASA has shown this technique only on one asteroid. “It means that we can quickly design a mission to deflect an asteroid if there is a threat, and we know that this has a very high chance of being effective,” says Franck Marchis, a planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

The Nasa made history by knocking an-asteroid off-course now its publishing-the-data-confirmed by NASA

This colour change was confirmed by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, as reported by Cristina Thomas, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, at a December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “We think this is likely because we have a lot of material from Dimorphos thrown off,” she says. The impact blasted through the asteroid’s weathered interior and exposed part of its insides, making everything look redder — at least until the fresh material dissipated.

GreenfieldboyCE: The images stopped after the spaceship left the ground. The impact kicked up a big cloud of dust and debris that could be seen from the ground.

CHENG: The same way that if you fire a gun and you shoot a bullet back that way, the gun kicks back against you. So that’s – the recoil force is an extra force that’s pushing against the asteroid.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Next year the European Space Agency will send out a mission that will include close-up images of the asteroid, along with information on its mass and how to get around it, all of which should help scientists understand how to push asteroids around. NPR News has a correspondent named Nell Greenfieldboyce.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/01/1160457205/nasa-made-history-by-knocking-an-asteroid-off-course-now-its-publishing-the-data

Strangeness in the sky: Seeing the impact of the DART mission in NAIROBi with a citizen science network of telescopes

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Hubble and another telescope were able to see the impact in great detail, but they missed it. That’s because these telescopes are highly sensitive and can observe very distant targets, but it’s hard to move them into the exact right position to catch a relatively close and very fast-moving object like an asteroid in our solar system.

It was possible to get observations from a number of areas, like the Indian Ocean and Nairobi inKenya, thanks to a network of telescopes. The Traveling Telescope project, which promotes science education around the globe and organized a special observation event in NAIROBi for the DART impact, is one of the groups Graykowski works with.

Another interesting oddity detected by the citizen science network was a change in color, with a mysterious reddening observed just as the impact happened. The optical effects of the cloud of dust being thrown up had been seen in a previous asteroid impact mission called Deep Impact in 2005.

We see it here too, that wasn’t just a “fluke” in the Deep Impact mission. The question is if the reddening is due to an optical effect, or if it is due to the composition of the asteroid. It’s cool if it’s about the material that makes up the asteroids. And the asteroids are some of the oldest bodies in the solar system.”

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23622777/dart-mission-nasa-asteroid-crash-amateur-astronomer

Observing at the Edge of the Night: Using a Network to Support Continuous, Permanent Observations of Cosmic Biological Processes

One of the advantages of a citizen science network is it can be used for continuous, ongoing observations. It’s difficult to observe an event right away because there are not enough time on Major telescopes to accommodate all of the researchers who want them. With a network, there is always someone watching.