March 12, 2026

Asteroids, Comets & the Latest from the DART Mission: A Cosmic Update

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Show Notes
Transcript

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Asteroid Updates, DART Mission Insights, and the Chris Case of 3I ATLAS
In this exciting episode of Space Nuts, hosts Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson delve into the fascinating world of comets and asteroids. From the latest updates on asteroid 2024 YR4's potential impact with the Moon to groundbreaking findings from the DART mission, this episode is packed with cosmic discoveries and intriguing discussions.
Episode Highlights:
- Asteroid 2024 YR4 Update: The hosts discuss the recent observations made using the James Webb Space Telescope, which have ruled out the possibility of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the Moon in 2032. They explore the significance of these findings and the implications for future lunar missions.
- DART Mission Success: Andrew and Fred revisit the DART mission, highlighting how the impact on the asteroid moon Dimorphos not only changed its orbit but also altered the orbit of the entire Didymos system around the Sun. This marks a historic achievement in planetary defense and asteroid science.
- The Mystery of 3I ATLAS: The episode concludes with a discussion on comet 3I ATLAS, which has been found to have an unusual chemical composition, particularly a high ratio of methanol to hydrogen cyanide. The hosts ponder what this could mean for our understanding of other solar systems and the chemistry of celestial bodies.

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Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.

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WEBVTT

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Hello again, and thank you for joining us on Space Nuts,

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the astronomy and space science podcast and radio show on

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community radio across Australia. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Great

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to have your company in this the six hundred and

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seventh episode of our program Can You Believe It? And

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this one is one hundred percent dedicated to comets and

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asteroids in one way or another. We've got an update

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on the potential impact of asteroid.

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Why are four with the Moon?

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They've been keeping an eye on this and they've come

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up with an answer and it's it's really clever the

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way they've done it. More news out of the Dart mission.

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Something else has happened there. Yes, it's on a collision

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course with nothing. Had you worry there for a moment?

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And three I Atlas is chemically unstable. In fact, it's

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falling down drunk. We'll tell you why on this episode

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of Space Nuts fifteen sec Channel ten nine Ignition, Space

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Nuts SI two Space Nurse as Can I Report It?

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Nels?

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Good joining us again for another stint on this little

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podcast of ours is Professor Fred Watts, an astronomer at last.

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Hello, Fred, Allou Andrew and it's nice to talk to you.

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What a surprise to see you.

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Now we have got a real rock and program today.

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Oh I love it.

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It's all about rocks and ice and asteroids and something

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else which we'll get too later that's not rock and ice.

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But first, an update on the potential impact of asteroid

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Why Are four with the moon. They were a little

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bit worried that it's chances of hitting the moon were well,

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I think I heard in the early stages it's discovery,

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the people were quoting twenty or thirty percent chance of

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it hitting the moon. That kind of got wound back

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to a more reasonable number. But now they've got definitive

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evidence of what's going to happen.

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That's correct. I mean, it's not just the moon that

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worried us for a while with asteroid twenty twenty four

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YR four, because when it was discovered back in twenty

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twenty four, as you might guess, Why Are four, when

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its trajectory was analyzed and IVE got to remember that

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an object is only sixty meters across, which is flying

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through space. You make observations of its position, and if

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you've only observed it over a short period of period

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of time, the uncertainties in its weld. Both its past

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orbit and its future orbit are very large. So it's

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what we call the arc, the arc of observation. The

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wider the arc of observations that you can make, the

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more accurate is going to be your assessment of where

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it's come from and where it's going. And so those

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early assessments, actually they were in early twenty twenty five

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when these calculations were made, but it did suggest a

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small chance that it might hit the Earth, and that

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was very quickly. I mean, I think I'm sure you

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and I talked about this on space.

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Yeah, we did.

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It was very quickly ruled out. But as it sort

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of wandered on its way early in twenty twenty five,

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there was still a possibility that it might hit the Moon,

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and the time that it would happen would be twenty

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thirty five was basically the targeted time for Sorry, no,

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is that right?

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Twenty thirty two? Thirty two?

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Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Sorry, I'm mixing up my numbers.

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You deserve when you get to a certain age. Twenty

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thirty two, there was a non zero chance that it

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would hit the Moon, and the story what happened then was,

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of course this object is. It's what we call a

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near Earth asteroid because it approaches near the Earth, but

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it's not near the Earth all the time. Most of

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the time, it's a long way away as it goes

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around in its orbit around the Sun. And it sort

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of disappeared from view essentially, certainly from the purview of

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ground based telescopes. There was not going to be any

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way we thought of observing it again until twenty twenty eight,

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when it would make another close approach, not one that

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had any risk attached to it. But we didn't expect

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to be able to see its position in any detail

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until twenty twenty eight, which we would need in order

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to predict where it might be in twenty thirty two,

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whether it's going to hit the Moon or not. But

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there are some scientists at who use the James Webb

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Space Telescope who tend not to let faintness stand in

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their way, because that's why you couldn't observe this object.

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It was just too faint and sure enough, earlier this

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year a last month in fact, they've made two sets

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of observations where they've actually picked up.

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The image a tiny faint image of.

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Twenty twenty four yr four they've picked it up and

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allowed them the calculations to basically take those new positions,

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the twenty twenty six positions into the orbit calculation, and

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what they've done is they've ruled out any possibility of

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it hitting the Moon. So that's an unexpected story for us.

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I didn't think we'll be talking about this again until

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twenty twenty eight, but no, we've talked about it in

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twenty twenty six, and the web telescope has come to rescue.

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Some people are disappointed andrew an asteroid hitting the Moon,

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especially if you know when it's going to happen, and

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you would know where it was going to happen as well,

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could have produced some quite interesting pyrotechnics. It would allow spectroscopy,

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which would tell you a little bit about the asteroid's

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makeup as well as the makeup of the lunar regulars

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and lunar terrain that it's smashed into. But that's not

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going to happen. And so for anybody like astronauts who

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might happen to be hanging about on the Moon in

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twenty thirty two, and they may well be both Chinese

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teycher notes and Western astronauts on.

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The moon by then that will be a great relief.

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I'm sure, yes, yes, you don't really want a mission

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interrupted by a piece of look and ice. What would

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could you if it did hit the moon? Let's just

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play that hard at the moment and you were looking

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at it at the time, would you actually say it

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with the naked eye or with the telescope?

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I don't think you would with the naked eye, but

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you certainly would with telescopes, and even maybe a relatively

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small telescope. We've known, I mean, certainly since the nineteen

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fifties that rocks do hit the moon, and often these

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are ones that are much smaller than the sixty meters

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of Yr four. It's for a long time. I remember,

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you know, when I was first getting into astronomy in

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the nineteen fifties that people talked, and in particular Patrick

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Moore talked about these what were called TLS transient lunar events,

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and there were flashes basically that amateur astronomers kept reporting

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said every so often there'll be something, you know, they'd

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be looking at the Moon through a telescope and suddenly

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there'd be a flash. And for a long time it

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was not shut not known really whether this was due

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to some sort of residual volcanic activity on the Moon

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or whether it was impact of asteroids and large meteor meteorites.

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And it was really once we'd seen the Apollo results

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and got to know the Moon a lot better because

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of the Apollo missions, that it was deemed to be

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impacts that caused these transient lunar events. And so it

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would certainly be a sixty meter object hitting the Moon

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is quite significant, and that I don't think it will

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be naked eye visibility, but you probably wouldn't need that

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big a telescope to be able to see it. So yeah,

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so interesting, especially you know, sorry, especially if you could

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predict when and where it was going to happen. You'd

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have all the amateur astronomers in the world on that

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side of the Earth a seems a moon with their

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eyes glued to the telescope.

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Yeah, now just need you probably do explain how this works.

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But the scientists using the James Web took images eight

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days apart. Is that that's obviously significant because then they

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get a straight line observation.

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Is that how it works?

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No, what happens is in fact what even just one

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of those observations would have been invaluable. Two is devastatingly invaluable.

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It makes it, you know, it increases your accuracy even

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more because what they do they combine those new observations

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with what we knew from its orbit the last when

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we observed it in twenty twenty four twenty five. So

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what you've suddenly got is you've you know, the arc

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of observation might just have been a few months at

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the end of twenty twenty four early twenty twenty five.

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Now what you've done is you've extended that arc by

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a year effectively, and that gives you a much much

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more accurate value of what we call its orbital elements.

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The asteroid is its orbit is actually delineated by six numbers,

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and those are the orbital elements, as they're called. Those

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numbers get more accurate the more the longer you can

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observe it for. So and it's not just that how

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long you can observe it for, it's the interval between,

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you know, what's the interval of time between the observations,

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which is what we've got here. We've suddenly got observations

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made a year later. It's it's absolutely narrowed down the

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uncertainties in the in the orbital elements, and so what

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we can then do is another great word. From those

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orbital elements, we can generate what's called an ephemeris, and

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the femurist tells you where the asteroid is going to be.

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It's a future predictions. That was what my MSc was on,

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making orbital elements and fMRI ds with of asteroids with

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a really new invention called computers. Yes, it's I think

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there'll be a big hit. Well that'd be hopefully not

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depending where you're standing. It was certainly I told you

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it was a big hit with the with the External Examiner,

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a gentleman in Glasgow University by the name of Archie Roy.

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He said, this work should be pop people should belt

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I read about this.

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It never was. But the one copy is actually behind me.

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It's one of the two thick volumes at the end.

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The others my PhD thesis.

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I keep thinking of questions while we talk about this,

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But what I find extraordinary is that the James Webspace

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Telescope was trying to find something sixty meters in size

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from a distance of forty eight million kilometers thirty million

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miles YEP and it founded twice.

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It's pretty fantastic, isn't it. It would just pop above

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the background noise. You know, when you're doing these observations,

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you've got various sources of what we call noise, which

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is basically uncertainty, and these are probably very close to

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that noise level. But it's just shown up enough that

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gives them what they call what we call a three

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sigma certainty. It's you know, that's a level of certainty

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that you need. It's just a technical term for the

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statistical analysis that's being used.

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Maybe they got help from AI as well.

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Maybe, Yeah, it's possible. I have a doomsday question though. Great,

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and we're going to talk about the Dark Mission next

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because there's new information about that deflection test. But when

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do you intervene? Like if we left it a couple

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of years because James Webb couldn't find it and then

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we realized it was going to hit Earth or something

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to that effect, when is it too late to we divene?

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It's with an asteroid like that, it's almost too late

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already because you've only got so if we'd observed this

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in twenty twenty eight and the probability of an impact

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with Earth had gone up. I mean that disappeared long ago,

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so it's not a problem. But if that happened, you've

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only got four years, and we're not ready quite yet

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to mount an emergency mission. I think down the track

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we will be, having seen what's come out the story,

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we're going to do next tent. I think down the

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track we will have probably planetary defense rockets and spacecraft

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almost ready to go, so that you could think about

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deflecting an object if it looked as though it was

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going to impact the Earth. But I suspect with four years,

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that's not very long for a modified orbit to evolve

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into one that will miss the planet altogether. I think

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what would happen would be you'd mobilize civil defense resources

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because you'd probably quite quickly get an idea where the

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collision was going to be. You'd have a circle of uncertainty,

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but you would know roughly where it was, which side

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of the planet was going to be facing it. And

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a sixty meter object, I mean, it's probably twice the

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size of what exploded over Chellyabinsk in twenty thirteen, and

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we know that that caused structural damage when the shockwave

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hit the ground from thirty kilometers high, and it was

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the broken glass that caused all the injuries. Nobody died,

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but people.

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Did get injured.

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And if you knew something like that was going to happen,

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then you'd get the people out or get them in

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bunkers or whatever, because that would be the most likely scenario.

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And air burst it may be what happened at Tunguska.

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Actually, yes, there's been.

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Yeah.

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I think the latest theory is it was actually a

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atmospheric graze rather than an impact in the course explosion downwards. Yeah,

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radiating out. The images from that are incredible. It can

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look them up all the trees. Yeah, just flattened. Unbelievable. Yeah.

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If you would like to read about the latest observations

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regarding asteroid twenty twenty four yr two, you can go

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to the science blog dot com website, or you can

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go to the ESET website where that publish the findings.

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There's a space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.

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I believe that this nation should commit itself.

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Were chieving the goal before this decade is out of

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landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely

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to the Europeece Nuts, Well, we said we talk about it,

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and we're going to talk about it the Dart mission.

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I think we should start by kind of just revisiting

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what that mission was all about and why, well, we

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know why, to see if we could move something that

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may hit Earth one day off a bit so that

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it missed us. I probably just explained it. But yeah,

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this was four years ago, wasn't it, Fred.

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Indeed it was, that's right, twenty twenty two, it was.

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I think it was its September. I can't remember the question,

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but I think it's about then. So a really really

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clever experiment conducted by NASA and a team of project scientists.

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What do you do to test whether you can move

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an asteroid? What you don't do is slap something into

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an asteroid and see whether you can change its orbit

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around the Sun. And that's because the orbits of planets,

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asteroids and comets actually as well, are very very stable.

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It's quite hard to change them because you're talking about,

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you know, lots of rather large forces, gravitational forces and

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things like that. So what they did was they said Okay,

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we won't do that. What we'll do is we'll find

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an asteroid with a moon, and we now know there

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are a lot of those, and they chose an asteroid

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called Didimos, if I remember rightly, about half a kilometer across,

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which had a little moon called Dimorphos, which is about

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I think one hundred and seventy meters. Is a figure

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that comes to mind, this little moon that goes around

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Didimos once in I've got a feeling remembering it is

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about eleven hours it's orbital period. So you smash something

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into the little asteroid moon, and what you then look

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for is how the orbit of the moon around its

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parent body, in other words, the orbit of Dimorphos around Didimos,

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how that changes, Because something on that scale is much

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easier to change than the orbit of an asteroid around

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the Sun. And as we all know, it was incredibly successful.

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The orbit of the orbital period of Dimorphous I think

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it was reduced by was it thirty three minutes? I

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think was the figure if I remember rightly, the Dart

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spacecraft and remembering these numbers from the last time we

312
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talked about it, Andrew, I think it was three tons.

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I think thereabouts. Hit dimorphous at six kilometers per second

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caused a huge plume of data, sorry, a huge plume

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of debris. Not data, lots of data as well, but

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debris two. And that was all in fact visible from

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Earth as well as from things like the Hubble space telescope.

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So it was an experiment that was well devised, well

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set up, and had excellent results. It did exactly it

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00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:51.400
Actually it did better than what the mission scientist hoped.

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And the reason why it did better was because there

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was a much bigger effect. When you hit something at

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six kilometers per second. Everything's vapor the surface that you hit,

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which is actually a rubble pile, but the surface he

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hits vaporized, as is the spacecraft itself, and that vapor

326
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acts like a rocket exhaust. So it's not just the

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nudge that you get from knocking something weighing three tons

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into an asteroid. It's also the sort of exhaust effect

329
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that comes from that as well. So it and that

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was what was very hard to quantify. We didn't really

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know what that would be, but it was enough to

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make a significant difference. So that's the backstory.

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00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:33.880
Andrew, Yes, then you were right.

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It was the twenty sixth of September twenty twenty two. Okay, great, yeah.

335
00:20:38.319 --> 00:20:42.039
Yeah, if you want to just check the of the

336
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dark impact while you're looking there, so correct if I've

337
00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:48.400
said it wrong. I said three tons, but I might

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be wrong.

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I can't someone I'll do that, But I guess we

340
00:20:52.480 --> 00:20:55.680
could move on to what's actually happened now they've done

341
00:20:55.960 --> 00:20:59.599
a more analysis and something spectacular has happened as a

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contract that event three and a half years.

343
00:21:02.160 --> 00:21:05.480
Ago, and the way it's happened is neat as well,

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because what you're looking for, if you're looking at the

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way an asteroid change an asteroid orbit changes, you're looking

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for incredible precision in space.

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And there are limits as to how.

348
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Precise we can get those measurements using telescopes. It's all

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about the position in space of the object. Telescopes are

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great at that, of course, but there is a better

351
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way for asteroids, and that is to use ocultations. And

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an ocultation is when an object like an asteroid passes

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in front of a star and you can predict this

354
00:21:45.039 --> 00:21:48.839
is going to happen. So what you do is for

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an object that's only one hundred and seventy meters across,

356
00:21:52.920 --> 00:21:58.359
which is the size of Dimorphous you've got. What you

357
00:21:58.400 --> 00:22:02.200
do is your space astronomers along a line who are

358
00:22:02.279 --> 00:22:06.799
observing and because you're not quite sure where the shadow

359
00:22:07.079 --> 00:22:09.920
of the asteroid cast in the light of the star

360
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is going to fall. But with telescopes, what you can

361
00:22:13.119 --> 00:22:15.119
do is you can see the dip in a star's

362
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light as the asteroid passes in front of it. It's

363
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what we call an ocultation. And if you've got enough

364
00:22:20.720 --> 00:22:23.880
observers on the ground, it gives you a much higher

365
00:22:23.960 --> 00:22:26.759
level of precision as to where in the sky that

366
00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:31.240
asteroid is. And so that process was carried out I

367
00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:36.480
think last year, and so that means that you've suddenly

368
00:22:36.519 --> 00:22:40.519
got very very accurate measurements of the position not just

369
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:45.000
of Dimorphis itself, but also the parent asteroid Didimos. In fact,

370
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:48.640
I think you might be Didimos that was used for

371
00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:54.960
the occultation. And so the bottom line is that low

372
00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:59.000
and behold, it didn't just the impact didn't just change

373
00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:03.440
the orbit of Dimorphous around Dilimos. It changed the orbit

374
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:06.839
of the whole system, the pair of them around the Sun.

375
00:23:07.160 --> 00:23:10.599
And that is the first time one of the nice

376
00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:12.920
quotes in one of these articles. It's the first time

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00:23:13.319 --> 00:23:16.200
a human made object has measurably altered the path of

378
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:19.200
a celestial body around the Sun. That's in a NASA statement.

379
00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:21.359
That is incredible.

380
00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:25.000
And of course the obvious question is now, will we

381
00:23:25.119 --> 00:23:27.720
be able to track where it will go versus where

382
00:23:27.759 --> 00:23:28.480
it would have gone?

383
00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:33.200
Yes, And indeed that's already sort of already happening, because

384
00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:36.559
there'll be further observations. And it's the same as we

385
00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:39.200
were just talking about in regard to Yr four. The

386
00:23:39.279 --> 00:23:41.960
longer the arc of observations you've got, the more accurate

387
00:23:42.680 --> 00:23:43.839
your knowledge of its orbit.

388
00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:47.480
Now the changing orbit is not much.

389
00:23:49.319 --> 00:23:53.920
I can't remember how many days I've got the paper

390
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:58.480
in front of me. Actually, the main paper, it doesn't

391
00:23:58.480 --> 00:24:01.400
actually give us the orbit little period of the pair

392
00:24:01.519 --> 00:24:05.000
around the Sun, but they've changed that orbital period by

393
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:09.279
wait for its point one five of a second. So

394
00:24:09.480 --> 00:24:11.720
it's very I mean, it's a matter of you know,

395
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:16.440
it's it's these two orbit between the between the orbits

396
00:24:16.440 --> 00:24:18.799