Scientists have discovered that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accidentally released a storm of boulders “as deadly as Hiroshima” during an experiment testing whether the trajectory of an asteroid can be changed.
In September 2022, NASA conducted its first “planetary defense” experiment known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), with the goal of intentionally crashing a spacecraft into the asteroid known as Dimorphos in an attempt to change its trajectory.
NASA astronomers at the time concluded that the project was an amazing success, and Dimorphos’ trajectory was changed slightly. The success of DART proved to scientists that there could be a way to save the Earth from a potential extinction-level asteroid impact.
But astronomers have now discovered that even though the impact succeeded, it also removed 37 boulders from Dimorphos, which are now zooming through space at a speed of around 13,000 miles per hour.
“If we follow the boulders in future Hubble observations, we may have enough data to pin down the boulders’ precise trajectories,” said Jewitt. “And then we’ll see in which directions they were launched from the surface and figure out exactly how they were ejected.”