Two years after the collision between the NASA spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos, a cloud of debris is heading towards Earth and Mars.
A NASA mission that will cause shooting stars “for at least the next 100 years”? This is what researchers assure in a study published this Monday, September 2 in the journal Planetary Science Journal.
Two years after the Dart mission – whose spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, about 11 million km from Earth, to study the possibility of diverting a celestial body from its trajectory that could hit the blue planet – scientists have carried out calculations that reveal that fragments of the asteroid could arrive near Earth and Mars in the next ten to thirty years.
Some debris could even be observed near Mars within seven years, while smaller fragments could reach Earth within ten years.
Shooting stars but no impact
Don’t worry, these debris do not pose any danger to the earth. Measuring about fifteen centimeters on average, they will disintegrate before reaching the surface of the ground.
“There is no possibility that any material from Dimorphos will reach the Earth’s surface,” said Eloy Peña Asensio, lead author of the study.
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The researcher also explained: “This material could produce visible meteors (commonly called shooting stars) when they enter the Martian atmosphere.” He added: “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.”
Last July, a cloud of rocks from the collision was observed in space. These rocks represent about 2% of all those identified on the surface of the asteroid.
The rocks scattered by the impact are moving away from the asteroid very slowly, at about 1km/h. A slowness that will allow the European Space Agency’s Hera mission – which is due to inspect the asteroid in 2026 – to observe the rocks.
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