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ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says the “$300 billion question” in NASA’S DART mission was if the probe had managed to shift the asteroid.
“One of the reasons this target was chosen was because there were two asteroids, a bigger one and a smaller one, Dimorphos – and that was the one the probe crashed into,” he told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
Dr Tucker said by measuring how much Dimorphos’ orbit changed around the larger one, Didymos, the shift can be discovered.
“Just as the moon goes around the earth, in this case you can measure how much that smaller one moved around the bigger one,” he said.
Dr Tucker said the orbit used to be approximately 11 hours and 53 minutes but since the probe crashed onto it, the orbit is now 11 hours and 31 minutes.
