DART撞击所造成的扩张烟尘
2022年10月5日 Expanding Plume from DART’s Impact Video Credit: Les Makes Observatory, J. Berthier, F. Vachier, A. Klotz, P. Thierry, T. Santana-Ros, ESA NEOCC, D. Föhring, E. Petrescu, M. Micheli Explanation: What happens if you crash a spaceship into an asteroid? In the case of NASA’s DART spaceship and the small asteroid Dimorphos, as happened last week, you get quite a plume. The goal of the planned impact was planetary protection — to show that the path of an asteroid can be slightly altered, so that, if done right, a big space rock will miss the Earth. The high brightness of the plume, though, was unexpected by many, and what it means remains a topic of research. One possibility is that 170-meter wide Dimorphos is primarily…