![]() ![]() In terms of the boulders themselves, Jewitt and fellow researchers identified 37 free-flung rocks spurting off of Dimorphos that range in size from three feet to 22 feet (.9 meters to 6.7 meters) across and have a collective mass about 0.1% the mass of the asteroid. NASA's DART asteroid-smashing mission: The ultimate guide DART mission reveals asteroid Dimorphos is dry as a bone NASA's asteroid-smashing DART mission revealed how battered space rock Dimorphos formed (The latter would be similar to what would happen if you hit a loose rocky surface with a hammer, causing small rocks to shake free across the surface.) In fact, DART's final image of the asteroid prior to its demise, taken two seconds before impact, shows such mini-rocks and debris already present on Dimorphos.Īccording to NASA's statement, the boulders' ejection could've either been due to what's known as an ejecta plume produced by the collision, or a seismic wave that shook them off. ![]() However, to be clear, a press release on these results points out that the boulders were likely not shattered away from Dimorphos as a result of DART's collision, but rather that they already existed on the surface of the asteroid and were merely dispersed upon impact. "The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system." "This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes," David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles focused on DART impact studies, said in a statement. ![]()
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