Fallout from NASA's DART mission could hit Earth — potentially 1st human-caused meteor shower

I found this really interesting. Not supposed to be as bad as the movie Armageddon, with Bruce Willis running around, but the fact that humans have caused it. What if one of those tiny rocks hit the Space Station? Would it damage it? If a big asteroid was really coming, would we get the blowback?
LiveScience

originally posted by: LollieK3
What if one of those tiny rocks hit the Space Station? Would it damage it?

I guess you've never seen the movie, 'Gravity' (2013)

We had a pretty extensive thread here on ATS and it was pretty cool to watch its impact. JPL and NASA IIRC seemed fairly confident it would not cause any more wear and tear than our satellites and space station already receive.

Sounds as if the fragments will be so small they won't even show up as "shooting stars".

Being ATS some here speculated the mission was them attempting to alter its course as it was going to be a threat in the far future

eyes.nasa.gov...#/home

what's weird the asteroid sentry orbital models end December 31st at midnight 2033, right after Ryugu makes an extremely close pass through Earth's own orbital path.

What qualifies as a "meteor"?

a reply to: WeMustCare

One that doesn't hit the ground.

a reply to: putnam6

Sounds as if the fragments will be so small they won't even show up as "shooting stars".

Correct , but that's should we actually encounter them which I think is unlikely.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: putnam6

Sounds as if the fragments will be so small they won't even show up as "shooting stars".

Correct , but that's should we actually encounter them which I think is unlikely.

Yes exactly, from the article

www.livescience.com... aused-meteor-shower

The ejected fragments are harmless because of their diminutive size — between 0.001 inches (30 micrometers) and 4 inches (10 centimeters) across. But their arrival in Earth's atmosphere could trigger a new light show in the night sky.

"If these ejected Dimorphos fragments reach Earth, they will not pose any risk," study lead author Eloy Peña-Asensio, an aerospace engineer and astrophysicist at the Polytechnic Institute of Milan in Italy, told Universe Today. "Their small size and high speed will cause them to disintegrate in the atmosphere, creating a beautiful luminous streak in the sky."


Dozens of larger rock fragments (circled) were spotted in the aftermath of the DART/Dimorphos collision. But none are currently headed for Earth.

However, there is still some uncertainty about when these fragments will reach us or when they will be visible.

The smallest fragments, which are likely traveling at speeds up to 3,350 mph (5,400 km/h), could reach us within seven years but will likely be too tiny to create any shooting stars in the sky, researchers wrote in the paper. But the larger fragments, which could be spotted as they burn up in the atmosphere, are moving more than four times slower and might not arrive for more than 30 years.

If and when these larger fragments arrive, they could create a brand new meteor shower, which the researchers have preemptively nicknamed the "Dimorphids." However, we won't know if this will really happen until these pieces start getting much closer to our planet.

Almost all meteor showers are from the debris trails of comets that periodically perihelion the Sun. The meteor showers are caused by Earth passing through these orbital trails on a yearly basis.

The debris scattered by the DART mission is absolutely miniscule compared to what is in orbit from comets. Apart from comet debris, past huge impacts on asteroids, moons and planets in the solar system in the past have brought us virtually every meteorite we find on Earth today and small meteoroids can never make it through our atmosphere.

Debris from DART will orbit forever just like every impact event big enough to cast material from the gravitational influence of any parent body, but the amount of material is relatively nothing compared to what is out there that has accumulated from the past 4.6 billion years.

Assuming that the impact caused debris to instantaneously exceeded escape velocity from the asteroid, as it could never accelerate more than that, it would radiate out in a somewhat uniform sphere, except for the area occluded by the asteroid itself. Disregarding the gravitational influence of other planets and the Sun, the density of ejected material should follow the inverse square rule, meaning that the density of dust particles in the leading edge of the debris sphere would be inversely proportional (reduced) to the square of the distance encountered as it travels away from the asteroid.

At that rate, the Earth would be lucky to encounter one dust particle, if any!