After the official conclusion of the double asteroid redirection mission, better known under the acronym DART, NASA announced that the operation was completely satisfactory, so it will set a precedent for planetary defense, since the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos was changed.
The impact occurred at the end of September and after a few days had passed, the asteroid’s orbit was studied and results were obtained in terms of a reduction of 32 minutes, which means that its orbit changed to 11 hours and 23 minutes of the other reference asteroid, named Didymos.
In this regard, nasa administrator Bull Nelson said that this has wide relevance in the scientific field because it is the first time that humans intentionally alter the orbit of an object in space.
In addition to that, it should be noted that the results were better than expected, it was expected that in the minimum margin, the trajectory would change at least in 73 seconds, however, after a few days of the end of the mission it could be noticed that it changed in up to two minutes.
Regarding the equipment that was used to make the observations, Nancy Chabot, leader of the coordination of the DART mission reported that four different optical telescopes are destined, which are analyzed by two different groups and in which, both yielded the same result in terms of variation in orbit.
Although the operation to deflect the asteroid has already been carried out, some measurements remain to be made, such as the efficiency of the impulse transfer of the collision and the properties of the asteroid in terms of mass and shape.
DATUM
In the European Space Agency there is a project called HERA, in which it is planned to go down to the double asteroid system to analyze the crater left by the DART collision.
