The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA mission that aims to redirect an asteroid by colliding with it. The target of DART is Dimorphos: a small asteroid that orbits Didymos, a larger asteroid, every 11.9 hours in a circular orbit. This binary system orbits the sun every 770 days in an elliptical orbit which crosses the orbits of both Earth and Mars. It is estimated that the impact of DART will change the velocity of Dimorphos by 0.4 mm s-1. A. How far would an object with a velocity of 0.4 mm s-1 travel in one year? You should take a year to be 365.25 days. B. The estimate of the change of velocity assumes that DART simply sticks to the surface of Dimorphos. Instead, suppose that the impact also causes a large amount of material to be thrown back out into space. How would this effect the estimate of the change of velocity?
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA mission that aims to redirect an asteroid by colliding with it. The target of DART is Dimorphos: a small asteroid that orbits Didymos, a larger asteroid, every 11.9 hours in a circular orbit. This binary system orbits the sun every 770 days in an elliptical orbit which crosses the orbits of both Earth and Mars.
It is estimated that the impact of DART will change the velocity of Dimorphos by 0.4 mm s-1.
A. How far would an object with a velocity of 0.4 mm s-1 travel in one year? You should take a year to be 365.25 days.
B. The estimate of the change of velocity assumes that DART simply sticks to the surface of Dimorphos. Instead, suppose that the impact also causes a large amount of material to be thrown back out into space. How would this effect the estimate of the change of velocity?
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