NASA smacked a spacecraft into an asteroid, learned details about its 12-million-year history

Perth: NASA’s DART mission – Double Asteroid Redirection Test – was humanity’s first real-world planetary defence mission.

In September 2022, the DART spacecraft smashed into the companion “moon” of a small asteroid 11 million kilometres from Earth.

One goal was to find out if we can give such things a shove if one were headed our way.

By gathering lots of data on approach and after the impact, we would also get a better idea of what we’d be in for if such an asteroid were to hit Earth.

Five new studies published in Nature Communications today have used the images sent back from DART and its travel buddy LICIACube to unravel the origins of the Didymos-Dimorphos dual asteroid system. They’ve also put that data in context for other asteroids out there.

Asteroids are natural hazards.

Our Solar System is full of small asteroids – debris that never made it into planets.

Those that come close to Earth’s orbit around the Sun are called Near Earth Objects (NEOs).

These pose the biggest risk to us, but are also the most accessible.

Planetary defence from these natural hazards really depends on knowing their composition – not just what they’re made of, but how they’re put together.

The Didymos asteroid, and its tiny moon Dimorphos, are what’s known as a binary asteroid system. They were the perfect target for the DART mission.