As a member of the NASA/DART team, SIOSlab graduate student Colby Merrill contributed to work that was recently published in Nature Communications! The two articles focus on the morphology and evolution of ejecta created by the DART impact and how those features can be used to inform observations and future kinetic impact missions. The article “Elliptical ejecta of asteroid Dimorphos is due to its surface curvature” examines how momentum transfer into asteroids works as a function of surface curvature and provides recommendations for future asteroid deflection missions. The article “Morphology of ejecta features from the impact on asteroid Dimorphos” constrains the size distribution of ejected particles by the DART impact and finds that the complex multi-tail and spiral features in the ejecta are diagnostic features of a binary system.
SIOSlab Contributes to Studies of Dimorphos’s Ejecta Features