Celestial VIDEO: DART's Impact with Asteroid Dimorphos - UPDATE, post 38 (it worked)

[packyderms_wife]

No, as the stories above make clear, the number is in fact in minutes of time. The object all along was to change the orbit of a moonlet of a larger asteroid by nudging the moonlet closer to the larger asteroid, which decreased the amount of time it takes for the moonlet to complete one full orbit. As far as I know the large asteroid's overall orbit wasn't changed at all, so measurements in degrees really don't enter into the picture as far as the two traveling through the Solar System goes.

Thank you, I was confused as to what they actually meant by minutes.

 

[Martinhouse]

I didn't take time to read the article, so thank you, Tanstaafl, for the correction and explanation.

Heh, I guess changing the duration of the orbit wouldn't change the speed of the moonlet enough to much affect it's location, would it?

 

[tanstaafl]

I didn't take time to read the article, so thank you, Tanstaafl, for the correction and explanation.

Heh, I guess changing the duration of the orbit wouldn't change the speed of the moonlet enough to much affect it's location, would it?

I've haven't heard that anyone credible has suggested they disconnected the moonlet's orbit from the larger asteroid, and it's the larger asteroid's orbit that really matters because it's going to drag that moonlet around until the end of the universe (give-or-take a few billion years, or until some external event changes the orbital dynamics). So they can tinker with the moonlet's orbit all they want as long as they don't knock its orbit loose from the larger asteroid or change the larger asteroid's orbit.

 

[jward]

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