Scientists Find the First Direct Evidence of Binary Asteroids Sharing Material
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Scientists occasionally have a hard time figuring out whether data they are seeing is an actual physical phenomenon or just a trick of their instrumentation. A new paper in The Planetary Science Journal from Jessica Sunshine and their colleagues at the University of Maryland describes one such confusing scenario. In this case, the researchers noted some fan-like patterns across the surface of Dimorphos, the asteroid hit by NASA’s DART mission, and thought it might be a trick of their camera. But
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Scientists Find the First Direct Evidence of Binary Asteroids Sharing Material By Andy Tomaswick - March 10, 2026 11:41 AM UTC | Planetary Science Scientists occasionally have a hard time figuring out whether data they are seeing is an actual physical phenomenon or just a trick of their instrumentation. A new paper in The Planetary Science Journal from Jessica Sunshine and their colleagues at the University of Maryland describes one such confusing scenario. In this case, the researchers noted some fan-like patterns across the surface of Dimorphos, the asteroid hit by NASA’s DART mission, and thought it might be a trick of their camera. But after some image correction, computation, and physical experimentation, they determined the patterns were caused by the first-ever documented cases of material transfer between two asteroids. Dimorphos is part of an asteroid binary with its larger sibling Didymos. The two asteroids are only about 1.2 kilometers apart from each other, and scientists have long thought that smaller asteroids would end up shedding material from their equator due to a process called the Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack, or YORP, effect. Sunlight will heat up one side of a small celestial body, such as an asteroid, and the resulting infrared radiation acts as a tiny thruster, causing the body to spin. Over the accumulation of millions of years, eventually these spins grow to a point where the asteroid starts losing chunks of its own material. The researchers didn’t originally set out to prove that theory. They simply noticed there appeared to be a pattern on Dimorphos’ surface and wanted to figure out what it was. Originally they thought it was an artifact of the camera used to collect images of the asteroid’s surface. But once they mathematically stripped away some of the shadows cast by boulders on the asteroid’s surface, the features were still there, converging near the equator on the side of Dimorphos facing away from Didymos. Impact of the DA...
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