NASA’s DART spacecraft took high-resolution images of the asteroids Dimorphos and Didymos moments before impacting Dimorphos in September 2022.
Analysis of these images has provided insights into the formation and history of these two near-Earth asteroids.
Didymos is estimated to have formed around 12.5 million years ago, while Dimorphos likely formed more recently around 300,000 years ago.
Both asteroids are “rubble piles” consisting of merged fragments and are estimated to have originally come from the breakup of a larger parent asteroid.
The largest boulders on the asteroids’ surfaces indicate they could not have formed from impacts and must have been ejected from a larger body.
Dimorphos is thought to have been ejected from the rapidly spinning equatorial region of the larger Didymos body in the past.
Observations of their surfaces show differences in slope, roughness and boulder size between the two asteroids and different regions on Didymos.
The DART impact successfully demonstrated asteroid deflection could work and provided valuable new data on these binary asteroids’ formation histories.
Source: Reuters
