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NASA Smashed into an Asteroid in 2022. The Debris Could End Up Reaching Earth

NASA's 2022 DART mission "successfully demonstrated how a fast-moving spacecraft could change an asteroid's trajectory by crashing into it," remembers Gizmodo, "potentially providing a way to defend Earth — though the asteroid in this test was never a real threat." But a followup study sugge...

Then, they fed LICIACube's data into supercomputers at NASA's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility to simulate how the debris from the asteroid — basically dust and rock — may have disseminated into space. "However, these faster particles are expected to be too small to produce visible meteors, based on early observations," said Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio, who lead the research team, in an interview with Universe Today. So while they won't pose any risk, "If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth... their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."

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