Queen guitarist Sir Brian May is saving the Earth from armageddon-bringing asteroids

Sir Brian May, the guitarist of Queen and a qualified astrophysicist, is part of a team studying if NASA's DART probe reshaped the Dimorphos asteroid when it hit it. The DART spacecraft, weighing about half a tonne, crashed into the asteroid at a speed of 6.1 km/s on 26 September 2022.

Sir Brian's role in simulating the impact is part of an initiative to see if spaceships can knock threatening asteroids off course to protect Earth. This comes as the European Space Agency (ESA) gets ready to send the Hera spacecraft to Dimorphos to check if DART left a crater.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy on Monday (26 Feb) suggests that there won't be a crater. Instead, the DART impact likely changed the whole asteroid, which ESA says would be "a significant finding for both asteroid science and planetary defence".

This change could also affect how Dimorphos's moon orbits around its parent, Didymos. To understand the results of the simulated reshaping, the team used stereoscopic images prepared by Sir Brian and his partner Claudia Manzoni.

They created a stereoscopic view showing what happened about 178 seconds after the DART impact. It shows the bloom-like effect of the impact.

ESA said: "This prolonged cratering event increased the efficiency of the deflection considerably; the team estimates that 1% of the entire mass of Dimorphos was thrown into space by DART's impact, thanks to its low escape velocity of just 10 cm/s. And around 8% of the asteroid's mass was shifted around its body."

To see what Dimorphos looks like after the impact, scientists will have to wait for the Hera spacecraft to arrive. Set to launch this October, Hera will reach Dimorphos at the end of 2026, equipped with lots of tools and small 'CubeSats' to