Use a spacecraft to hit the asteroid!Human first "exercise" effect revealed the secret

Wen ｜ Wenlele

NASA (NASA) dual -planet redirecting the DART task is the world's first comprehensive planet defense test against asteroid hitting the earth. Recently, researchers at the University of Berne and National Planetary Research Center (NCCR) in Switzerland found that when the DART spacecraft's impact target may make the asteroid "beyond recognition" instead of leaving only a relatively small impact pit.

66 million years ago, a huge asteroid hit the earth, which may lead to dinosaurs extinct. There is no known asteroid that is directly threatened to the earth.

But if one day, a huge asteroid may have to deviate from the track when the orbit may collide with the earth to prevent catastrophic consequences from being deviated.

In November last year, NASA's DART spacecraft launched a launch, which is the first full -size experiment of such "exercises". The task is to collide with the asteroid and deviate from the track in order to provide valuable information for the development of the planet defense system.

In a recent study published in the "Planet Science Magazine", researchers from the University of Berne and NCCR simulated this impact in a new method. The results show that the impact may cause the target to be much more serious than the previous imagination.

"Contrary to the small asteroids in people's imagination, direct evidence of space mission from Japan's Moriko 2 detectors shows that the internal structure of the asteroid may be very loose, similar to a pile of gravel, and it is interacted with gravity and less small. The internal agglomeration is connected together, "the main author of the paper, Sabina Raducan at the University of Berne.

However, most of the simulation of the DART task before assumed its impact target -the interior of the asteroid Dimorphos is much stronger. "This may completely change the collision of DART spacecraft and Dimorphos in September this year." Raducan said. DART hit this 160 -meter -wide planet at a speed of 24,000 kilometers per hour, which may cause the latter to deform severely instead of leaving a relatively small impact pit. Dimorphos may have a stronger bias, and the substances generated by impact may also be more than previously estimated.

"So far, this loose internal structure has not been thoroughly studied. One of the reasons is no feasible way." Raducan said.

"We have adopted a novel modeling method. This method considers the spread of shock waves, compacking, and subsequent material flow. For the first time, we can simulate the formation of the entire impact pit generated by the impact asteroid (such as Dimorphos). "Raducan said.

In 2024, the European Space Administration will launch a spatial detector to Dimorphos as part of the subsequent DART task HERA. The purpose is to intuitively understand the result of the Dart detector impact.

"In order to maximize the use of the HERA mission, we need to have a good understanding of the potential results of the DART spacecraft impact." Research on Martin Jutzi of NCCR said, "This is not only related to the planet defense, but also increases our small to small to small. Planet's understanding. "

Related thesis information:

https://doi.org/10.3847/psj/ac67a7

"China Science News" (2022-07-01 The 2nd edition of the original title "Facial! Scientist predicts the results of the asteroid"))

not

Edit | Ji Data-FILTERED="Filtered">

Capture | Guo Gang

- END -