Asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA intentionally hit with a rocket during its DART mission in September 2022, is behaving in unpredicted ways.
. Dimorphos also appeared to be continuously slowing down in its orbit for at least a month after the rocket impact, contrary to NASA's predictions.
California high school teacher Jonathan Swift and his students first detected these unexpected changes while observing Dimorphos with their school's 2.3-foot telescope last fall. Several weeks after the DART impact, NASA announced that Dimorphos had slowed in its orbit around Didymos by about 33 minutes.
"The number we got was slightly larger, a change of 34 minutes," Swift told New Scientist."That was inconsistent at an uncomfortable level."Swift presented his class's findings at the American Astronomical Society conference in June. The DART team has since confirmed that Dimorphos did indeed continue slowing in its orbit up to a month after the impact — however, their calculations show an additional slowdown of 15 seconds, rather than a full minute.
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