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Orbital and Physical Characterization of Asteroid Dimorphos After DART Impact

1 pointsby Jason_Protellabout 1 year ago

1 comment

Jason_Protellabout 1 year ago
Abstract<p>The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission impacted Dimorphos, the satellite of binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos, on 2022 September 26 UTC. We estimate the changes in the orbital and physical properties of the system due to the impact using ground-based photometric and radar observations, as well as DART camera observations. Under the assumption that Didymos is an oblate spheroid, we estimate that its equatorial and polar radii are 394 ± 11 m and 290 ± 16 m, respectively. We estimate that the DART impact instantaneously changed the along-track velocity of Dimorphos by −2.63 ± 0.06 mm s−1. Initially, after the impact, Dimorphos&#x27;s orbital period had changed by −32.7 minutes ± 16 s to 11.377 ± 0.004 hr. We find that over the subsequent several weeks the orbital period changed by an additional 34 ± 15 s, eventually stabilizing at 11.3674 ± 0.0004 hr. The total change in the orbital period was −33.25 minutes ±1.5 s. The postimpact orbit exhibits an apsidal precession rate of 6.7 ± 0fdg2 day−1. Under our model, this rate is driven by the oblateness parameter of Didymos, J2, as well as the spherical harmonics coefficients, C20 and C22, of Dimorphos&#x27;s gravity. Under the assumption that Dimorphos is a triaxial ellipsoid with a uniform density, its C20 and C22 estimates imply axial ratios, a&#x2F;b and a&#x2F;c, of about 1.3 and 1.6, respectively. Preimpact images from DART indicate Dimorphos&#x27;s shape was close to that of an oblate spheroid, and thus our results indicate that the DART impact significantly altered the shape of Dimorphos.