By Peter Hess For Dailymail.Com 4/4/2024
NASA's 'Armageddon' mission backfires! DART asteroid deflection test created a cloud of giant boulders that are set to crash into Mars
• The craft rammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, creating 37 new space boulders
• This new cloud of boulders will cross Mars's orbit multiple times in the future
NASA's proved in 2022 that humans could redirect 'city killer' asteroids away from Earth - but with unintended consequences that could put our planet in danger.
A pair of Italian astronomers found that when the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) craft rammed the 560-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphos off its course, the collision created a cloud of 37 new space boulders that is shooting toward Mars.
If one of these boulders hit the red planet, it could create a crater between 200 and 300 meters across - 656 to nearly 1,000 feet.
The astronomers warned that if NASA needs to knock a killer asteroid off its collision course with Earth in the future it will be crucial to consider where the debris from such a spectacular crash would go - lest it ends up colliding with Earth after all.
During the DART mission, NASA used an uncrewed spacecraft to slam into Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour to see if it was possible to push a space rock off its orbit.
Scientists discovered that the DART mission left in its wake 37 newly formed boulders shooting through space, on a totally different course.
On their current trajectory, these boulders may collide with Mars, concluded study co-authors Marco Fenucci of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Albino Carbognani, of the Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science in Bologna, Italy.
The boulders measure between four and seven meters across - 13 to 23 feet.
Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the boulders escaped the gravity of the Dimorphos/Didymos pair - taking a separate path from the 6,000-mile-long tail of dust and rocks created by the impact.
And their orbit could interfere with that of the Hera mission, an ESA spacecraft scheduled to intersect Dimorphos in 2026 to get a closer look at the DART impact's effects.
More:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13272725/nasa-armageddon-mission-dart-spacecraft-asteroid-mars.html
