this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
224 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

58981 readers
4691 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Asteroid behaving unexpectedly after Nasa's deliberate Dart crash::A school teacher and his students have discovered that an asteroid deliberately hit by a Nasa spacecraft is behaving in a weird way.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 15 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


However, a teacher and his class studying the rock have now discovered that since the collision, it has moved in a strange and unexpected way.

By crashing into the smaller asteroid, the Dart mission successfully altered Dimorphos' orbit by "tens of metres".

Dart, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, used a spacecraft around the size of a fridge.

By successfully crashing directly into Dimorphos, Nasa was testing if it could use similar methods to knock an asteroid off course, if one is in danger of hitting the Earth.

After discovering the unusual behaviour of Dimorphos, it's likely that Nasa will have to factor in the high school's findings, if they ever launch another asteroid redirection mission in the future.

The European Space Agency is launching a mission called Hera, which will arrive at Dimorphos in 2026 and could reveal more details as to what happened to the asteroid following the impact.


The original article contains 360 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!