Keith Cooper is a freelance science journalist and editor in the United Kingdom, and has a degree in physics and astrophysics from the University of Manchester.
DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, was designed to show whether we could divert a potentially hazardous asteroid away from, in which the 170-meter-wide Dimorphos orbits a larger 760-meter space rock called Didymos. When DART impacted Dimorphos on 26 September 2022, astronomers were able to measure how much the impact had nudged the asteroid by measuring how the space rock's orbit around Didymos changed.
Originally, Dimorphos would have been an oblate spheroid, which is kind of like a squashed ball. The impact of DART at 5 kilometers per second sent shockwaves through the asteroid, resulting in it becoming more elongated and shifting its axis of rotation off-center. The new shape is inferred by astronomers from the light curve of the Didymos–Dimorphos system, which is aligned in such a way that we can see them transiting and eclipsing one another.
"The results of study agree with others that are being published," said Tom Statler, who is the lead scientist forHQ in Washington, DC."Seeing separate groups analyze the data and independently come to the same conclusions is a hallmark of a solid scientific result." Prior to impact, Dimorphos was an oblate spheroid, which describes a flattened sphere . After impact, its shape was significantly changed . 's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California, show that Dimorphos' orbital period has reduced to 11 hours, 22 minutes and 3 seconds, within an error margin of 1.5 seconds. Its orbital radius has also reduced to 1.152 kilometers .
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