{"id":5350,"date":"2024-02-26T11:20:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T18:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/astronomy-and-planetary-science\/?p=5350"},"modified":"2024-03-04T11:21:12","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T18:21:12","slug":"nasas-crash-into-an-asteroid-may-have-altered-its-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/nasas-crash-into-an-asteroid-may-have-altered-its-shape\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Crash Into an Asteroid May Have Altered Its Shape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-5350-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/vp.nyt.com\/video\/2024\/02\/26\/115937_1_26sci-asteroid-vid1_wg_1080p.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/vp.nyt.com\/video\/2024\/02\/26\/115937_1_26sci-asteroid-vid1_wg_1080p.mp4\">https:\/\/vp.nyt.com\/video\/2024\/02\/26\/115937_1_26sci-asteroid-vid1_wg_1080p.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/center><br \/>\n<!-- shortcode-image-caption -->\n<span class=\"shortcode-image-caption shortcode-image-caption--center\">\n        <span class=\"shortcode-image-caption__container\">\n                <span class=\"shortcode-image-caption__caption\">\n            <span>\nA computer model simulated the DART spacecraft colliding with the asteroid Dimorphos.CreditCredit&hellip;Raducan et al., Nature\n\n<\/span>\n        <\/span>\n                \n    <\/span>\n    <\/span>\n\n<p>Dimorphos\u2019s response is \u201ccompletely outside of the realm of physics as we understand it\u201d in our day-to-day lives, said <strong>Cristina Thomas<\/strong>, the lead of the mission\u2019s observations working group at Northern Arizona University who was not involved with the study. And \u201cthis has overarching implications for planetary defense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DART showed that a tiny spacecraft can deflect an asteroid. But the study indicates that crashing a similarly disjointed space rock too forcefully risks fragmenting it, which, in a real asteroid emergency, could create multiple Earthbound asteroids.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/02\/26\/science\/nasa-crash-asteroid-dart-study.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read the full New York Times story!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dimorphos\u2019s response is \u201ccompletely outside of the realm of physics as we understand it\u201d in our day-to-day lives, said Cristina Thomas, the lead of the mission\u2019s observations working group at Northern Arizona University who was not involved with the study. And \u201cthis has overarching implications for planetary defense.\u201d DART showed that a tiny spacecraft can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[211,191],"class_list":["post-5350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-and-planetary-science","tag-cristina-thomas","tag-dart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5350"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5358,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions\/5358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-astronomy-planetary-science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}