NASA announced yesterday that a spacecraft which slammed into an asteroid in September successfully shifted its orbit. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, Flagstaff astronomers are among those involved in the first-ever planetary defense test.
After the impact, the asteroid Dimorphous shifted its orbit slightly closer to the larger asteroid that it’s circling. It now completes an orbit about 30 minutes faster.
NASA scientist Lori Glaze said in a press conference that just a minute or two would have been enough to declare the experiment a success. "For the first time ever, humanity has changed the orbit of a planetary body," she said.
Astronomers around the world have studied Dimorphous since the impact two weeks ago to calculate the change in orbit. Nick Moskovitz of Lowell Observatory is among them. "It was just thrilling to see the data come in—you’re processing the data and there it is, just staring at you…. It was, again, sort of surprising that it was at the upper end of the range of possibility."
They’ll now create models from the data showing how this technique could be used to protect Earth from a hazardous asteroid. Scientists say only a small nudge is required to move an asteroid out of Earth’s path as long as there’s enough warning.