Itokawa, image taken by Hayabusa in 2005.
Asteroids approaching Earth always make headlines because a collision with one could result in a massive disaster for human life.When confronted with these asteroids, space agencies plan to either change the motion of a natural celestial body in space or destroy it.
The DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) successfully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022. This mission's objective was to see if we could impact an asteroid with a small spacecraft and deflect it. It was a resounding success.
However, scientists become concerned when a celestial body is so massive, powerful, and old that it cannot be destroyed.
According to a recent study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, rubble pile asteroids are a particularly resilient sort of asteroid that are difficult to destroy by collision.
The study mentioned that "monolithic-type asteroids that are more than a kilometre in diameter have been predicted to have a lifespan of a few hundred million years."
"However, the durability of rubble pile asteroids is currently not known. According to this research, the rubble pile Itokawa asteroid was formed more than 4.2 billion years ago.
Esperts said that "such a long survival time for an asteroid is attributed to the shock-absorbent nature of rubble pile material and suggests that rubble piles are hard to destroy once they are created."
The study results suggested that rubble piles are probably more abundant in the asteroid belt than previously thought and provide constrain to help develop mitigation strategies to prevent asteroid collisions with Earth.