NASA’s DART Turned Rock Into Beehive?

If something might go wrong it might. Consider NASA’s “surprise” discovery 37 boulders were spotted near asteroid hit by its 2022 DART spacecraft. Agency now fears bashing into a global killer could send a cluster of mean rocks our way.

As CBS reported, “Scientists were surprised to see that several dozen boulders lifted off the asteroid after it was hit as an experimental try at deflecting a wanna-be incoming meteor. While the asteroid’s course WAS slightly altered to hoorahs, NASA now said in a news release the surprise 3-dozen guests ‘might mean that smacking an Earth-approaching asteroid might result in a cluster of threatening boulders heading in our direction.”

Apparently, using the Hubble telescope, scientists “found that the 37 boulders flung from the asteroid ranged in size from just 3 feet across to 22 feet across.” Not global killers & the really big asteroid bashed by DART is still NOT a threat to Mother Earth, but still … The boulders as seen in photos taken by the DART spacecraft seconds before the collision suggest they are “not debris from the asteroid itself, but were likely already scattered across the asteroid’s surface” & shaken free on impact. It happens, huh? David Jewitt, a UCLA planetary scientist said the boulders are “like a very slowly expanding swarm of bees that eventually will spread along the [asteroid’s] orbit around the Sun. So, do we send Bruce Willis up again to clean up the mess like in Armageddon? Or, will the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft set to arrive at the asteroid in late 2026 perform a post-impact study that concludes for us “not to worry”? Sleep tight.

Davd Soul