Morphology of ejecta features from the impact on asteroid Dimorphos
Abstract
Abstract Hypervelocity impacts play a significant role in the evolution of asteroids, causing material to be ejected and partially reaccreted. However, the dynamics and evolution of ejected material in a binary asteroid system have never been observed directly. Observations of Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact on asteroid Dimorphos have revealed features on a scale of thousands of kilometers, including curved ejecta streams and a tail bifurcation originating from the Didymos system. Here we show that these features result naturally from the dynamical interaction of the ejecta with the binary system and solar radiation pressure. These mechanisms may be used to constrain the orbit of a secondary body, or to investigate the binary nature of an asteroid. Also, they may reveal breakup or fission events in active asteroids, and help determine the asteroid’s properties following an impact event. In the case of DART, our findings suggest that Dimorphos is a very weak, rubble-pile asteroid, with an ejecta mass estimated to be in the range of (1.1-5.5)×107 kg.
Article Details
Authors (33)
Fabio Ferrari
Paolo Panicucci
Gianmario Merisio
Carmine Giordano
Mattia Pugliatti
Jian-Yang Li
Eugene G. Fahnestock
Sabina D. Raducan
Martin Jutzi
Stefania Soldini
Masatoshi Hirabayashi
Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Colby C. Merrill
Patrick Michel
Fernando Moreno
Gonzalo Tancredi
Jessica M. Sunshine
Department of Astronomy, Department of Geological, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Jens Ormö
Isabel Herreros
Harrison Agrusa
Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, French National Center for Scientific Research, Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France.
Özgür Karatekin
Yun Zhang
Nancy L. Chabot
Andrew F. Cheng
Derek C. Richardson
Andrew S. Rivkin
Adriano Campo Bagatin
Tony L. Farnham
Stavro Ivanovski
Alice Lucchetti
Maurizio Pajola
Alessandro Rossi
Daniel J. Scheeres
Filippo Tusberti