1. Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos
- Author
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Jian-Yang Li, Masatoshi Hirabayashi, Tony L. Farnham, Jessica M. Sunshine, Matthew M. Knight, Gonzalo Tancredi, Fernando Moreno, Brian Murphy, Cyrielle Opitom, Steve Chesley, Daniel J. Scheeres, Cristina A. Thomas, Eugene G. Fahnestock, Andrew F. Cheng, Linda Dressel, Carolyn M. Ernst, Fabio Ferrari, Alan Fitzsimmons, Simone Ieva, Stavro L. Ivanovski, Theodore Kareta, Ludmilla Kolokolova, Tim Lister, Sabina D. Raducan, Andrew S. Rivkin, Alessandro Rossi, Stefania Soldini, Angela M. Stickle, Alison Vick, Jean-Baptiste Vincent, Harold A. Weaver, Stefano Bagnulo, Michele T. Bannister, Saverio Cambioni, Adriano Campo Bagatin, Nancy L. Chabot, Gabriele Cremonese, R. Terik Daly, Elisabetta Dotto, David A. Glenar, Mikael Granvik, Pedro H. Hasselmann, Isabel Herreros, Seth Jacobson, Martin Jutzi, Tomas Kohout, Fiorangela La Forgia, Monica Lazzarin, Zhong-Yi Lin, Ramin Lolachi, Alice Lucchetti, Rahil Makadia, Elena Mazzotta Epifani, Patrick Michel, Alessandra Migliorini, Nicholas A. Moskovitz, Jens Ormö, Maurizio Pajola, Paul Sánchez, Stephen R. Schwartz, Colin Snodgrass, Jordan Steckloff, Timothy J. Stubbs, Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez, Joseph Louis LAGRANGE (LAGRANGE), Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS), COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) (COMUE UCA)-Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Université Côte d'Azur (UCA)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), CNRS through the MITI interdisciplinary programmes, CNES, ESA, European Project: 870377,NEO-MAPP, Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Física, Ingeniería de Sistemas y Teoría de la Señal, Universidad de Alicante. Instituto Universitario de Física Aplicada a las Ciencias y las Tecnologías, Astronomía y Astrofísica, European Commission, and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
- Subjects
asteroids ,Ejecta ,530 Physics ,[SDU.ASTR.EP]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]/Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP] ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Kuiper belt ,Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi ,Dimorphos ,Comets ,Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology ,Geología ,General ,planetary defense ,Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) ,Ingeniería Mecánica ,Multidisciplinary ,Astrophysical dust ,520 Astronomy ,620 Engineering ,Asteroids ,Astronomía ,Impact ,[SDU]Sciences of the Universe [physics] ,DART ,Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics - Abstract
Some active asteroids have been proposed to be the result of impact events. Because active asteroids are generally discovered serendipitously only after their tail formation, the process of the impact ejecta evolving into a tail has never been directly observed. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, apart from having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid from an impact under precisely known impact conditions. Here we report the observations of the DART impact ejecta with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) from impact time T+15 minutes to T+18.5 days at spatial resolutions of ~2.1 km per pixel. Our observations reveal a complex evolution of ejecta, which is first dominated by the gravitational interaction between the Didymos binary system and the ejected dust and later by solar radiation pressure. The lowest-speed ejecta dispersed via a sustained tail that displayed a consistent morphology with previously observed asteroid tails thought to be produced by impact. The ejecta evolution following DART's controlled impact experiment thus provides a framework for understanding the fundamental mechanisms acting on asteroids disrupted by natural impact., accepted by Nature
- Published
- 2023