Meet the common people who helped NASA shoot an asteroid off course

NASA recently confirmed that its DART mission, the first planetary defense test, was a success, but the agency had help from 31 citizen scientists watching the epic event from their backyards.

Armed with Unistellar telescopes, these amateur astronomers watched and tracked how Dimorphos changed in brightness before, during, and after the impact.

This data helped NASA scientists measure the mass of dust released when the boxy spacecraft hit Dimporphos at 15,000 miles per hour, allowing them to confirm that the asteroid was knocked out of its orbit.

Dimorphos’ orbit increased from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes.

Scott Kardel, from California, told DailyMail.com: “The coolest results came from Reunion Island, where someone was positioned with their Unisterallar telescope to capture the event as it happened and see the dust cloud dissipate [of the asteroid].’

“It’s amazing they got that from such a tiny telescope, and that’s what makes this citizen scientist thing so awesome that there’s someone out there somewhere in the world who can see something in space.”

NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022, dubbed NASA’s “Armageddon moment,” which could be deployed as an asteroid could hit Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046.

The US Space Agency identified asteroid 2023 DW last month and found that the probability of an impact on February 14 at 4:44 p.m. ET is currently 1 in 560 – but where it will fall is not yet known.

However, NASA is currently focusing on analyzing data from its DART mission.

The spacecraft’s target was a small moon called Dimorphos, orbiting its parent asteroid Didymos.

On September 26, the world watched as DART flew at 15,000 miles per hour toward Dimorphos to knock it out of orbit.

And on March 1, 2023, NASA confirmed that the mission was a complete success.

The space agency’s refrigerator-sized satellite managed to shorten the orbit of a 520-foot-wide asteroid by 33 minutes – nearly five times longer than predicted.

The results released this month include the observations made by citizens using a Unistellare eVscope2 telescope, which folds small enough to fit in a backpack.

Justus Randolph, who lives in Georgia, told DailyMail.com: “I was like at the Super Bowl because I did the science and also watched the live stream event.”

Kardel is an associate professor of astronomy and associate planetarium director at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, and Randolph is a professor in the College of Nursing at Mercer University

Both are among 31 citizen scientists who published a paper about their observations in February.

The group also worked with eight astronomers from the SETI Institute, led by Ariel Graykowski, a SETI Institute postdoctoral fellow.

“The timing of the observations during the DART impact and the continued monitoring of Didymos thereafter was absolutely critical in analyzing the impact of the impact on Dimorphos,” Graykowski said.

“The Unistellar network was the perfect tool to do just that!”

From ground-based observations of the impact, the Unistellar Network captured the sudden 10-fold brightening of the Didymos system due to the ejecta produced when the spacecraft impacted Dimorphos.

These analyzes resulted in an estimated momentum gain factor similar to that reported by NASA’s DART team.

The Unistellar network of telescopes also measured a color change at the time of impact as they captured the moment of impact.

“This whole mission was just one big experiment, can we really do this right? Can we bump an asteroid and shift its orbit so it doesn’t hit Earth?’ said Cardel.

“NASA carried out the event but didn’t actually have anything close by to observe it, but for telescopes in the Unistellar network, what mattered most was seeing the event as it happened and seeing the dust cloud, that came from that asteroid.

“It allowed people to determine how that energy got into the asteroid and how it propelled things into space, and then further study the small moon’s orbit around the larger asteroid.

That gives you a chance to see that the orbit has changed.’

The Citizen Scientists determined that the impact had occurred at 18:15 ET, “which agrees with the reported Earth-observed impact time of 23:15:02.183 UTC, which itself due to light is 38 seconds after the actual 91 time of impact with the spacecraft is -travel time,” the study reads.

“We were able to make a lot of observations before the event, during the event and then after the event and it was because of the network that allowed us to do that. No one could have done it alone,” Randolph said.