NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), conducted in September 2022, may lead to an unprecedented human-made meteor shower, scientists have revealed. The mission's goal was to test asteroid deflection technologies by purposefully colliding with the moonlet Dimorphos, a tiny satellite circling the asteroid Didymos. Over two million pounds of rocks and dust were sent into space as a result of the impact, an unanticipated side effect.
Recent studies suggest that pieces of Dimorphos may start to fall on Earth and Mars in the next ten years, with the potential to produce century-long meteor showers. The scientific community is quite interested in these discoveries because they point to a novel—albeit accidental—phenomenon that may have arisen via space flight.
According to Eloy Peña Asensio, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy's Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology department, these particles may sporadically make it to Earth and Mars over the course of the next century. "Once the first particles reach Mars or Earth, they could continue to arrive intermittently and periodically for at least the next 100 years, which is the duration of our calculations," Asensio explained.
Though fascinating, the debris does not represent a threat to Earth. The particles would burn up when they entered Earth's atmosphere; they were predicted to range in size from a grain of sand to a smartphone. But as they do so, they could produce meteors that are visible, sometimes known as shooting stars. "This material could produce visible meteors as they penetrate the Martian atmosphere," Asensio added.
These findings came from a research that used data from a tiny satellite that broke away from the DART probe before the impact. Important video of the impact and the cloud of debris it produced was acquired by this satellite. Since then, the data have made it possible to analyze the debris in detail.
Asensio and his colleagues used this data to model the trajectories of three million particles released by the collision. They took into account the pull of the sun, other planets, Didymos, and Dimorphos. According to their models, larger and faster pieces may reach Earth in less than ten years at a speed of 3,579 miles per hour, while debris moving at 1,118 miles per hour might reach Mars.