Dart mission successfully shifted its target’s orbit

by arunbahlon 10/12/22, 3:38 AMwith 2 comments
by walrus01on 10/12/22, 7:01 AM

It's my understanding that the 160m size chunk of stuff in question has been described as a "rubble pile". Probably not stuck together very well.

What are the theories of what would happen if you hit such a thing, in a scenario where you needed to deflect it, with a high velocity 9000 kg mass (vs the much smaller and low cost DART), and instead of altering its orbit it broke up into a bunch of medium sized chunks?