NASA mission to create first human-made meteor shower: turning imagination into reality

A recent NASA mission has led to the creation of over two million pounds of space debris, which may result in a meteor shower lasting up to 100 years. The debris comes from NASA's Double Asteroids Redirect Test (DART) mission, where a spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022. This mission, initially aimed at testing Earth's defense against potential asteroid threats, unexpectedly reshaped Dimorphos and released a significant amount of rocky debris.

Debris may reach Earth and Mars

According to a study from Cornell University, the fragments from the DART mission could eventually reach both Earth and Mars within the next 10 to 30 years. The debris could produce a faint, human-made meteor shower as it enters the atmosphere, with the potential to continue raining down for up to a century. However, scientists believe these meteors would be harmless, as the debris pieces are expected to be small, ranging from the size of grains to that of a smartphone.

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While the chance of the debris reaching Earth is low, if it does happen, the meteor shower would be easily recognizable as it wouldn’t match any existing showers. This unique meteor shower could be visible mainly from the southern hemisphere, particularly around May, and would appear to come from the Indus constellation.