Three dust particles returned by the Japanese Space Agencys Hayabusa 1 probe (Japanese for falcon) in 2010, discovered that Itokawa– and other asteroids like it– might be tough to damage and resistant to an accident.
Nevertheless, a brand-new study led by Curtin University, found that all may not come as easily as the Dimorphos experiment. Itokawa is a 4.2 billion-year-old asteroid approximately 500 meters long and around two million miles away from our home world (dont stress, its not headed towards Earth). The difference in between it and Dimorphous is that Itokawa is made from rocky rubble and dust and not a single giant lump of rock.
On September 26, NASAs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) raked into Dimorphos, effectively changing the asteroids orbit. The test proved that it is possible to nudge an asteroid off course, and away from Earth.
” Unlike monolithic asteroids, Itokawa is not a single lump of rock, however belongs to the rubble stack household which implies its totally made from loose boulders and rocks, with nearly half of it being empty space,” stated lead author Fred Jourdan, director of the Western Australian Argon Isotope Facility, part of the John de Laeter Centre and the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin. “In short, we discovered that Itokawa resembles a huge space cushion, and extremely difficult to ruin.”
Itokawa is basically a stack of rocks loosely held together by their mutual gravity. Most likely, any effect effective adequate to produce a crater would shake loose rocks, which would then fill the crater.
” The huge effect that damaged Itokawas monolithic parent asteroid and formed Itokawa took place a minimum of 4.2 billion years earlier,” Jourdan said. “Such a remarkably long survival time for an asteroid the size of Itokawa is attributed to the shock-absorbent nature of debris pile material.”
The Itokawa asteroid is made completely of loose stones and rocks.
Based upon observations made by Hayabusa and Earthly telescopes, the asteroid is believed to be a piece of a much bigger things shattered by a previous crash. The evaluated dust likewise provides evidence that ordinary chondrite meteorites, the most frequent kind of meteorite in the world, are produced by S-type asteroids (this refers to the asteroids color spectrum) like Itokawa, the most regular kind of asteroid in the inner main belt.
2 complementary techniques were utilized to examine the 3 dust particles. The first strategy, known as electron backscattered diffraction, can identify whether a rock has been impacted by a meteor. The second approach– argon-argon dating– is utilized to date asteroid effects.
” We set out to answer whether rubble pile asteroids are resistant to being shocked or whether they piece at the slightest knock,” Timms said. “Now that we have actually discovered they can survive in the planetary system for practically its entire history, they should be more abundant in the asteroid belt than previously thought, so there is more opportunity that if a huge asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, it will be a debris pile.”
If you d like to find out more about asteroid dangers and what we can do to stop them, make sure to take a look at our interview with Mark Boslough, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and among the worlds leading professionals in planetary defense.
Itokawa is a 4.2 billion-year-old asteroid approximately 500 meters long and around two million miles away from our home planet (do not stress, its not headed towards Earth). The distinction in between it and Dimorphous is that Itokawa is made of rocky rubble and dust and not a single giant lump of rock.
The first strategy, known as electron backscattered diffraction, can identify whether a rock has been affected by a meteor. The second approach– argon-argon dating– is utilized to date asteroid effects.
“( I) f an asteroid is detected too late for a kinetic push, we can then possibly utilize a more aggressive technique like using the shockwave of a close-by nuclear blast to press a rubble-pile asteroid off course without destroying it.”
However, Timms said that learning more about this durability can be utilized to our benefit.
Nick Timms, likewise from Curtins School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and a co-author of the paper, stated the durability of rubble stack asteroids was formerly unknown, jeopardizing the ability to design defense techniques in case one was hurtling towards Earth.