Topic
Field of science and engineering focused on detecting, tracking, and mitigating potential asteroid, comet, and debris impacts on planetary bodies.
NASA measured an 18-meter hole left by a spent upper stage on Aug. 5, and the hunt for it doubled as a live test of impact-prediction tools built for planetary defense.
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Researchers at Beihang University simulated a sail that steers by diffracting sunlight sideways, and report that a head-on impact at about 100 km/s would deliver 230 times DART's energy per kilogram of impactor.
Reality
The two returns from Torifune are the first laser ranging of an asteroid. The ranges, footprints and timings JAXA has published point to more than one approach geometry, and the team is still locating the spots the beam hit.
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About a hundred SPH runs at the University of Bern converge on a single non-destructive strike as the source of Deimos's south-polar depression and its global regolith. The surface is ejecta, and it is weak.
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Researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology model two ways to detonate a nuclear device against an asteroid found too late to nudge. The second reuses a DART-style impactor as a digger.
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