Debris caused by NASA mission may create 100-year meteor shower | Space

Rocky debris caused by a NASA mission could create the first human-made meteor shower.

In Sept. 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroids Redirect Test (DART) intentionally collided with a tiny moonlet named Dimorphos, which orbited the asteroid Didymos, to test its asteroid deflection technology.

Scientists believe the crash produced over 2 million pounds of rocks and dust — and a new study suggests fragments of Dimorphos could land around Earth and Mars in 10 to 30 years, and the meteor showers could last for up to a century.

“Once the first particles reach Mars or Earth, they could continue to arrive intermittently and periodically for at least the next 100 years, which is the duration of our calculations,” Eloy Peña Asensio, a researcher for the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research and Technology group at Italy’s Polytechnic University of Milan, told CNN.

The debris can also potentially generate a light show over Earth.

“This material could produce visible meteors (commonly called shooting stars) as they penetrate the Martian atmosphere,” Asensio added.

The particles will be…

Source nypost.com