NASA Created Meteor Shower. Do We Have a Chance to See It?

In late September 2022, the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) probe hit the asteroid Dimorphos. It was the first-ever planetary defense test, the purpose of which was to test how hitting a small celestial body could change its course. The mission was a success – the tiny rock, orbiting the asteroid Didymos, was pushed into a different orbit.

The impact was accompanied by almost a million kilograms of rocky material that was thrown into space. European researchers have looked at where it could end up – as their analysis published on the arXiv portal shows, there is a possibility that the rocks will come to our regions of the Solar System.

The team modeled the rocks’ trajectories, taking into account how the gravity of other bodies in the solar system would affect their motion. The scientists calculated the rocks’ size and speed based on data from the LICIACube satellite, which monitored the mission. The main simulation modeled 3 million particles, divided into groups of sizes 10 centimeters, 0.5 centimeters, and 30 micrometers, traveling at an estimated speed of up to 500 meters per second.

– Our calculations indicate that with these ejection parameters, this material has a chance of reaching Mars. This is the most likely scenario – Eloya Pena-Asensio from the Politecnico di Milano, the lead author of the study, told Space.com. As he explained, the particles would need about 13 years to reach the Red Planet.

In another simulation, based on data recorded by the telescope NASA Swift and the network of ground-based telescopes, the path of the space rocks looked a bit different. These instruments indicated that the material was moving faster, at 1400-1800 m/s. A simulation based on these assumptions showed that within 5 years of the DART impact, the particles would reach Mars, and in 2029 they would appear close to Earth.

Scientists have said that the debris that reaches Earth will likely be too small to burn up in the atmosphere as meteors. However, if slightly larger particles, such as those missed by LICIACube, make it to our planet, it is possible that they could burn up in the atmosphere, creating visible streaks in the sky.

“After the first particles reach Mars or Earth, they could continue to flow into those areas periodically for at least another hundred years, because that was the time frame of our calculations,” Pena-Asensio told CNN.

The simulations were even able to show where on Dimorphos the rocks were released. The larger pieces headed toward Mars came from the northern part of the impact crater. The smaller, nimble pieces that could have reached Earth were likely ejected from its southwestern part.