NASA's DART asteroid mission is a rare opportunity for space-rock scientists
The Didymos/Dimorphos couple is the first binary asteroid visited by a human-made spacecraft.Before DART slams into the surface of Dimorphos at a mind-boggling speed of 13,680 mph , the spacecraft will be transmitting images of the asteroid, captured by its DRACO camera, at the rate of one per second. At first, the camera will see both asteroids, then it will focus on Dimorphos, guiding DART toward it.
Because scientists know so little about Dimorphos, they have no idea how the rock will respond to DART's attack.
"The reason is that you are in a very very low gravity environment," added Michel, a planetary scientist at the Cote d’Azur University in France."And the response of the surface is sometimes totally counterintuitive because our intuition is based on what we experience on Earth.
If Dimorphos is made of the same material as its bigger buddy, and the assumptions are correct, then the collision with DART will be less messy and possibly less efficient in changing Dimorphos' orbit than it would be if the asteroid were softer, Daly said. To know for sure, however, we will have to wait for LICIACube's data.
The cubesat will also make a flyby around Dimorphos and view the entire asteroid to allow scientists to reconstruct its shape. It will take weeks to months, however, to download all the data and reveal Dimorphos' secrets. Since the Didymos-Dimorphos duo is the first binary asteroid to be studied in detail, scientists hope to learn something about how these space-rock couples form, said Daly. According to estimates, about 16% of near Earth asteroids wider than 650 feet may be binaries.
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