Asteroid Castalia Impact Simulation
This visualization shows Castalia, a larger-than-average asteroid, being hit by a house-sized rock traveling at 5 kilometers per second. Lasting merely a second, the collision approximates the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Using nuclear weapons has been proposed for breaking up, or at least diverting, asteroids headed towards Earth. Simulations show that such an impact will fracture a solid asteroid, but, later, gravity will reassemble the pieces.
A cut-away view of the asteroid Castalia as it is impacted by a house-sized rock traveling at 5 kilometers per second. The scattering white dots are fragments from the smaller rock.
Video slate image reads, "Asteroid Castalia Impact Simulation
This visualization shows Castalia being hit by a house-sized rock traveling at 5 km per second (11,000 miles per hour). Fractures appear throughout the asteroid, with the greatest damage shown in red. The scattering white dots are fragments from the smaller rock. The simulation shows that such an impact will fracture a solid asteroid, but, later, gravity will reassemble the pieces."
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Animators
- Shigeru Suzuki (NASA)
- Eric DeJong (NASA/JPL CalTech)
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Scientists
- Erik Asphaug (University of California, Santa Cruz)
- Steven Ostro (NASA/JPL CalTech)
- Scott Hudson (Washington State University)
- Willy Benz (University of Bern)
- Daniel Scheeres (Iowa State University)
Release date
This page was originally published on Thursday, January 21, 1999.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:59 PM EDT.