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  • Thomas, Cristina A; Naidu, Shantanu P; Scheirich, Peter; Moskovitz, Nicholas A; Pravec, Petr; Chesley, Steven R; Rivkin, Andrew S; Osip, David J; Lister, Tim A; Benner, Lance A M; Brozović, Marina; Contreras, Carlos; Morrell, Nidia; Rożek, Agata; Kušnirák, Peter; Hornoch, Kamil; Mages, Declan; Taylor, Patrick A; Seymour, Andrew D; Snodgrass, Colin; Jørgensen, Uffe G; Martin, Dominik; Skiff, Brian; Polakis, Tom; Knight, Matthew M; Farnham, Tony L; Giorgini, Jon D; Rush, Brian; Bellerose, Julie; Salas, Pedro; Armentrout, William P; Watts, Galen; Busch, Michael W; Chatelain, Joseph; Gomez, Edward; Greenstreet, Sarah; Phillips, Liz; Bonavita, Mariangela; Burgdorf, Martin J; Khalouei, Elahe; Longa-Peña, Penélope; Rabus, Markus; Sajadian, Sedighe; Chabot, Nancy L; Cheng, Andrew F; Ryan, William H; Ryan, Eileen V; Holt, Carrie E; Agrusa, Harrison F

    arXiv.org, 03/2023
    Paper, Journal Article

    The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully performed the first test of a kinetic impactor for asteroid deflection by impacting Dimorphos, the secondary of near-Earth binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and changing the orbital period of Dimorphos. A change in orbital period of approximately 7 minutes was expected if the incident momentum from the DART spacecraft was directly transferred to the asteroid target in a perfectly inelastic collision, but studies of the probable impact conditions and asteroid properties indicated that a considerable momentum enhancement (\(\beta\)) was possible. In the years prior to impact, we used lightcurve observations to accurately determine the pre-impact orbit parameters of Dimorphos with respect to Didymos. Here we report the change in the orbital period of Dimorphos as a result of the DART kinetic impact to be -33.0 +/- 1.0 (3\(\sigma\)) minutes. Using new Earth-based lightcurve and radar observations, two independent approaches determined identical values for the change in the orbital period. This large orbit period change suggests that ejecta contributed a significant amount of momentum to the asteroid beyond what the DART spacecraft carried.