The impact NASA's DART probe had on
the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, 11 million
kilometres away from Earth, did not create a crater, it
completely reshaped the asteroid in a process known as global
deformation, bringing material that was inside to the surface,
according to a study published in the Nature Astronomy journal.
The study was led by Switzerland's Bern University and featured
the participation of many Italian researchers from Milan
Polytechnic, the National Institute of Astrophysics, the
National Research Centre's 'Nello Carrara' Institute of Applied
Physics in Florence and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
The reshaping was possible because Dimorphos is formed by a mass
of rubble left by its partner, the asteroid Didymos, held
together by relatively weak forces.
The researchers led by Sabina Raducan conducted extremely
accurate simulations of the clash between Dimorphos and DART:
those closest to what really happened suggest that the asteroid
is very weak, with characteristics similar to Bennu, samples of
which were taken back to Earth last year by NASA's Osiris-Rex
mission, and to Ryugu, fragments of which were removed thanks to
the Japanese probe Hayabusa 2 and they are currently being
examined in Italy.
So the mission to change the trajectory of a celestial object
did not just have consequences at the point of impact, it also
modified the overall structure in a significant way.
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