THERE may be a flaw in Nasa’s only defence against Earth-shattering asteroids, according to new analysis.
In 2022, the US space agency showed for the first time that Earth could indeed shield itself and mankind from “potentially hazardous” space rocks.
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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft intentionally collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, to knock it off its course.
The spacecraft rammed into the middle of the more than 500ft asteroid at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h), around 7million miles away from Earth.
The mission was declared a success, as it altered Dimorphos‘ trajectory, but it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid.
But in doing so, chunks of debris were knocked loose from the asteroid by the impact.
Now, there are dozens of large “boulders“ traveling in space with even greater momentum than predicted, a new study, published in The Planetary Science Journal, has cautioned.
The study raises doubts about the success of future asteroid-deflecting missions.
Analysing images captured by the European Space Agency‘s LICIACube satellite during DART, researchers were able track 104 boulders as they shot away from the asteroid.
Each hunk of celestial debris measured between 0.7 and 11.8 feet (0.2 to 3.6 meters) across.
They are moving with around three times more momentum than predicted, which is could be the result of “an additional kick” the boulders received as they were pushed away from the asteroid’s surface, study lead author Tony Farnham, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in a statement.
“That additional factor changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions,” he added.
The team also noted that the boulders were arranged into unusual patterns.
“We saw that the boulders weren’t scattered randomly in space,” Farnham said.
“Instead, they were clustered in two pretty distinct groups, with an absence of material elsewhere, which means that something unknown is at work here.”
To avoid any future asteroid doom, researchers must consider all the data – no matter how seemingly insignificant it seems.
“If an asteroid was tumbling toward us, and we knew we had to move it a specific amount to prevent it from hitting Earth, then all these subtleties become very, very important,” study co-author Jessica Sunshine, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in the statement.
“You can think of it as a cosmic pool game. We might miss the pocket if we don’t consider all the variables.”
This is not the first time scientists have noticed something unexpected about the fallout from the DART mission.
In April 2024, researchers noted that some of the largest boulders might have been set on a collision course with Mars.
The debris could smash into the Red Planet in around 6,000 years, which may endanger any future human colonies living there – if Elon Musk gets his way.
Simulations based on LICIACube data also suggested that some of the smaller asteroid fragments could hit Earth in around 30 years.
Although these pose no threat to our planet, and might instead trigger an epic meteor shower.
However, despite all these uncertainties, smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is still humanity’s most viable option to protect ourselves from any real asteroid threat.
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