Last year, our mighty space explorers, NASA, played a game of intergalactic bowling, aiming their DART spacecraft ball at the skittle-like asteroid Dimorphos! Zooming at 14,000 miles per hour, Strike! They wanted to see if they could give the space rock a tiny nudge like I tried to do with my annoying older brother, Jordan. Guess what? They did it!
But now they’re scratching their heads, trying to figure out the aftermath, like mom looking at the mess after my superhero action figure battles. If we have to play this bowling game to save Earth from a giant asteroid, we sure need to know the rules.
They're peering at the rock fragments, examining the leftovers of the strike like when I investigate the remnants of a squished bug. They expected rubble, just like when I drop my breakfast toast and it splinters into crumbs. They were unsure whether the space rock would boing like a bouncy ball, create a crater like my shovel does in the sandpit, or possibly shatter into dangerous space splinters.
Mom always says practice makes perfect, and that's why they tested this in outer space, beyond my backyard limits. But how would a real asteroid, one of those Jordan-sized rocks, react to a big cosmic whack? I wonder, too.
Apparently many asteroids look like my sister Lucy's messy play kitchen pile. Loose stuff, rather than hard and compact like my favorite football. Some were visited by Japanese space explorers and NASA's own scientists. But here's the kicker, this one they hit was also similar to Lucy's kitchen mess. So, the impact most likely made a crater and splashed out a load of debris near its surface, just like when I kick Lucy's play heap and stuff flies everywhere!
To work out the details of the post-crash scene, some smart guys with a ultra-zooming Hubble Space Telescope kept a watch on Dimorphos. Finally, they discovered a pack of new floating rocks. Imagine my football causing an explosion in Lucy's heap, sending toy dishes and pans slowly drifting away.
Other smarty pants, including the NASA's Bowling Champions, took a detailed look at the rock cloud left behind by their cosmic strike. It seemed at first, the bits were scattered like a cone, but as time passed, it formed a tail, just like a comet, or Jordan with toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
So, there you have it, folks. A space bowling match, just another day in the majestic Cosmo-Carnival.
Based on the original article "DART Showed How to Smash an Asteroid. So Where Did the Space Shrapnel Go?".
