Giant space 'boulders' unleashed by NASA's DART mission aren't behaving as expected, revealing hidden risks of deflecting asteroids
Three years ago, NASA made history by deliberately smashing a spacecraft into a large asteroid, altering its course and demonstrating humankind's ability to protect our planet from "potentially hazardous" space rocks in the future.
But a new analysis hints that the debris from this monumental collision is not behaving as expected, raising doubts about the success of future asteroid-deflecting missions.
On Sept. 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft purposefully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, crashing directly into the middle of the space rock at around 15,000 mph (24,000 km/h). The mission was a smashing success: Not only did DART alter Dimorphos' trajectory — shortening its trip around its partner asteroid Didymos by around 30 minutes — it also completely changed the shape of the asteroid.
The collision, which occurred more than 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, demonstrated that this type of action, known as the "kinetic impactor" method, was a conceivably viable option for protecting our planet from potentially hazardous asteroids.
However, a new study, published July 4 in The Planetary Science Journal, has revealed a hidden complication: Dozens of large "boulders," which were knocked loose from the asteroid by the spacecraft are apparently traveling with greater momentum than predicted and have configured into surprisingly non-random patterns.
Related: Could scientists stop a 'planet killer' asteroid from hitting Earth?
The researchers analyzed images from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), which flew alongside DART to monitor the collision. This allowed them to track 104 boulders — each between 0.7 and 11.8 feet (0.2 to 3.6 meters) across — as they shot away from the asteroid.
The big takeaway was that these boulders had around three times more momentum than predicted, likely as the result of "an additional kick" the boulders received as they were pushed away from the asteroid's surface, study lead author Tony Farnham, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in a statement. "That additional factor changes the physics we need to consider when planning these types of missions," he added.
The team also noted that the boulders were arranged into unexpected patterns: "We saw that the boulders weren't scattered randomly in space," Farnham said. "Instead, they were clustered in two pretty distinct groups, with an absence of material elsewhere, which means that something unknown is at work here."
The researchers want to learn more about what happened so that we have all the necessary information at hand if and when we need to make decisions about using a kinetic impactor to protect our planet from an incoming space rock in the future.
"If an asteroid was tumbling toward us, and we knew we had to move it a specific amount to prevent it from hitting Earth, then all these subtleties become very, very important," study co-author Jessica Sunshine, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, said in the statement. "You can think of it as a cosmic pool game," she added. "We might miss the pocket if we don't consider all the variables."
This is not the first time scientists have noticed something unexpected about the fallout from the DART mission.
In April 2024, researchers noted that some of the largest boulders might have been set on a collision course with Mars and could smash into the Red Planet in around 6,000 years, potentially endangering any future human colonies that may live there.
In August last year, simulations using LICIACube data also suggested that some of the smaller fragments from the asteroid could hit Earth in around 30 years, potentially triggering a spectacular meteor shower without posing a real threat to our planet.
However, despite all these uncertainties, the kinetic impactor method is still the most viable option to protect ourselves from any real threat of being hit by an asteroid.
RELATED STORIES
—'City killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 could shower Earth with 'bullet-like' meteors if it hits the moon in 2032
—An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show
—'God of Chaos' asteroid Apophis could still hit Earth in 2029, study hints — but we won't know for 3 more years
This topic was discussed earlier this year when the "city killer" asteroid 2024 YR4 was temporarily believed to have a roughly 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. The odds of a collision are now zero, but experts are keen to keep the conversation going, especially as the severe cuts to NASA's budget proposed by the Trump administration could limit our ability to spot dangerous space rocks.
Researchers will get a better idea of what is happening with the Dimorphos debris next year, when ESA's Hera spacecraft arrives at the asteroid to properly study the fallout from the DART collision.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Colossal eruption carves 250,000-mile-long 'canyon of fire' into the sun (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On July 15, a colossal filament erupted from the sun's northeastern limb, dramatically reshaping part of our star's surface, albeit briefly, and unleashing a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The outburst was so powerful that it carved a glowing trench of hot plasma more than 250,000 miles (about 400,000 kilometers) long, roughly the distance from Earth to the moon. The explosive event was captured in stunning detail by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), showing the filament unraveling as solar material arcs and cascades through the sun's atmosphere. As the filament collapsed, it left behind what some call a "canyon of fire," with towering walls estimated to rise at least 12,400 miles (20,000 km) high, according to These glowing rifts form when the sun's magnetic field lines violently snap and realign after an eruption, leaving behind a searing hot trench of plasma that traces the reshaping magnetic field, according to NASA. This fiery chasm isn't just a visual spectacle. Filaments are cooler, dense ribbons of solar plasma that can hang suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic fields, according to NOAA. When these become unstable, they can erupt dramatically, sometimes launching coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into space — powerful blasts of solar plasma and magnetic fields that can trigger geomagnetic storms here on Earth. Coronagraph imagery from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and GOES-19 satellite suggests that while the filament eruption did release a CME, there is no Earth-directed component. "The CME is heading away from Earth," aurora chaser Vincent Ledvina wrote in a post on X. "Here is the CME in LASCO C2 (left) and CCOR-1 (right) which has a later frame of the CME further spread out. The front is traveling pretty slowly and away from Earth." You can keep up to date with the latest northern lights forecasts, alerts and geomagnetic storm warnings with our aurora forecast live blog. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
2 new NASA satellites will track space weather to help keep us safe from solar storms
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A new mission set to blast off for low-Earth orbit will study magnetic storms around the Earth and learn more about how they affect our atmosphere and satellites. NASA's Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, or TRACERS for short, mission represents a pair of satellites that will fly in a sun-synchronous orbit — meaning they are always over the dayside of the Earth — and pass through the polar cusps. The cusps are, in essence, two holes in Earth's magnetosphere, where the field lines dip down onto the magnetic poles. When an influx of solar wind particles slam into Earth's magnetosphere, they can overload the magnetic-field lines, causing them to snap, disconnect and then reconnect. Magnetic reconnection, as the process is called, can release energy that accelerates charged particles down the funnel-shaped cusps and into our atmosphere, where they collide with molecules and, if a solar storm is intense enough, generate auroral lights. When TRACERS launches — expected to be no earlier than late July — it will seek to learn more about the magnetic-reconnection process and how space weather affects our planet. "What we'll learn from TRACERS is critical for understanding, and eventually predicting, how energy from our sun impacts not only the Earth, but also our space- and ground-based assets, whether it be GPS or communications signals, power grids, space assets or our astronauts working in space," said Joe Westlake, Director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, in a NASA teleconference. Historically, the problem in studying magnetic reconnection has been that when a satellite flies through the region of reconnection and captures data, all it sees is a snapshot. Then, 90 minutes or so later on its next orbit, it takes another snapshot. In that elapsed time, the region may have changed, but it's impossible to tell from those snapshots why it's different. It could be because the system itself is changing, or the magnetic-reconnection coupling process between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere is moving about — or maybe it is switching on and off. "These are fundamental things that we need to understand," said TRACERS' principal investigator, David Miles of the University of Iowa, in the same teleconference. That's why TRACERS is important, because it is two satellites working in tandem rather than being a lone magnetic explorer. "They're going to follow each other at a very close separation," said Miles. "So, one spacecraft goes through, and within two minutes the second spacecraft comes through, and that gives us two closely spaced measurements." RELATED STORIES — Colossal eruption carves 250,000-mile-long 'canyon of fire' into the sun (video) — May 2024 solar storm cost $500 million in damages to farmers, new study reveals — 'We don't know how bad it could get': Are we ready for the worst space weather? Together, the twin spacecraft will measure the magnetic- and electric-field strengths where magnetic reconnection is taking place, as well as what the local ions and electrons trapped in the magnetosphere are doing. "What TRACERS is going to study is how the output of the sun couples to near-Earth space," said Miles. "What we're looking to understand is how the coupling between those systems changes in space and in time." TRACERS will not be alone out there, and will be able to work with other missions already in operation, such as NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMM), that studies reconnection from farther afield than TRACERS' low-Earth orbit 590 kilometers above our heads. There's also NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, and the Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), which both study solar-wind interactions with our planet from low-Earth orbit. "TRACERS joins the fleet of current heliophysics missions that are actively increasing our understanding of the sun, space weather, and how to mitigate its impacts," said Westlake. The $170 million TRACERS is set to launch no earlier than the end of July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will be carrying several other small missions into orbit at the same time. The answers that TRACERS could provide about how magnetic reconnection works will allow scientists to better protect critical infrastructure for when solar storms hit. "It's going to help us keep our way of life safe here on Earth," said Westlake. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
See fireballs and meteors crisscross the night sky over the next month
What's better than one meteor shower? Two of them sending streaks of light across the night sky at the same time! Each year, around the middle of July, our planet Earth plunges into two separate streams of comet debris, each composed of ice and dust that orbits around the Sun. As we fly through these streams, the atmosphere sweeps up the tiny meteoroids directly in our path, which flash by overhead, producing two overlapping meteor showers. The first, known as the Perseids, originates from a comet called 109P/Swift–Tuttle. Due to the angle of this comet's path around the Sun, the meteoroids from its debris stream enter the atmosphere from the direction of the constellation Perseus, in the northern sky. The radiant of the Perseids (the point in the sky the shower appears to originate from) is located in the northeastern sky each night from mid-July through late August. The view in this simulation depicts the night of the peak, on August 12-13, 2025. The phase of the Moon (Waning Gibbous) is shown in the top right corner. (Simulation courtesy Stellarium. Moon phase from NASA's Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio) The second meteor shower is the Southern delta Aquariids. Although we don't know for sure, this shower appears to come from an oddball comet called 96P/Machholz. The odd thing about this object is that it's apparently unlike any other comet in our solar system, with a unique orbit and chemical composition. It's even possible that it's an alien comet that was long ago captured by our Sun's gravity as it wandered through interstellar space. The meteors from Comet Machholz's debris stream can be traced back to the constellation Aquarius, in the southern sky. Also, due to the specific angle of the comet's path through the solar system, it produces a slightly better show in the southern hemisphere than the north. However, here in Canada, we can still see a decent number of meteors from it, if we know when to look. The radiant of the delta Aquariids is located in the southern sky each night from mid-July through early August. The view in this simulation depicts the night of the peak, on July 31, 2025. The phase of the Moon (First Quarter) is shown in the top right corner. (Simulation courtesy Stellarium. Moon phase from NASA's Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio) READ MORE: The Perseids and delta Aquariids begin on July 17 and 18, respectively, although the delta Aquariids can start as early as the 12th. For the first few days of each shower, they produce only one or two meteors per hour. As we approach the end of July, though, their numbers ramp up. By the last few nights of the month, we can be seeing up to 20 Perseid meteors per hour streaking out of the northeast, crisscrossing with up to 20 delta Aquariids per hour from the southeast. With the timing of the Moon's phases, the nights of the 29th, 30th, and 31st are probably the best time to go out and spot these meteors. This is because the Moon will be off in the west throughout the evening and will set by midnight, leaving most of the night nice and dark for picking out those brief flashes of light in the sky. This wider simulation of the eastern sky, on the night of July 30-31, 2025, shows the radiants of the Perseid and delta Aquariid meteor showers in their respective spots. The nearly First Quarter Moon is setting on the western horizon at this time, out of view of the observer. (Stellarium) DON'T MISS: Once we're into August, the number of Perseid meteors will continue to rise. Meanwhile, the number of delta Aquariids will ramp down to just a few per hour, up until the 12th. That's when Earth exits Comet Machholz's debris stream and the shower ends (although some sources report that it can persist until the 23rd). Even as the total number of meteors zipping across the sky increases, night by night, we'll unfortunately run into a problem from the Moon. During the first two weeks of August, the Moon will be casting off quite a bit of light as it passes through its brightest phases — Waxing Gibbous from the 2nd to the 7th, the Full Sturgeon Moon on the 8th-9th, and Waning Gibbous from the 9th to the 14th. The added moonlight will wash out the sky, especially on humid August nights, causing us to miss many of the dimmer meteors. This includes the night of the 12th-13th, when the Perseids reach their peak. The phases of the Moon from July 27 through August 16 reveal why sky conditions may be best for the delta Aquariid and Perseid meteor showers at the end of July. (Scott Sutherland/NASA's Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio) Normally, at the Perseids' peak, observers under clear dark skies have a chance to spot up to 75-100 meteors every hour. This year, with only the brighter meteors shining through, we will likely see closer to 40-50 per hour. Weather conditions could reduce that even further. Fortunately, the Perseids are well-known for being the meteor shower that produces the greatest number of fireballs! Watch below: Perseid fireball captured by NASA all-sky camera Click here to view the video Fireballs are exceptionally bright meteors that are easily visible for hundreds of kilometres around on clear nights, even for observers trapped under heavily light-polluted skies. After the peak of the Perseids, we can still spot meteors from the shower as it ramps down, right up until August 24. So, watch for clear skies in your forecast and keep an eye out for meteors and fireballs flashing through the night. Watch below: What do we know about Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS? Click here to view the video
