Submitted by ECatPlay t3_y2o5k2 in askscience

NASA's Dart strike on Dimorphos modified its orbit by 32 minutes, instead of the 10 minutes NASA anticipated. I would have expected some uncertainty, and a bigger than predicted effect would seem like a good thing, but this seems like a big difference. It's apparently because of the amount debris, "hurled out into space, creating a comet-like trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles." Does this discrepancy really mean that knowing its mass and trajectory aren't enough to predict what sort of strike will generate the necessary change in trajectory of an asteroid? Will we also have to be able to predict the extent and nature of fragmentation? Does this become a structural problem, too?

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