Yes, Newton's laws of motion still hold, although the three body problem is hard to solve. Dimorphos, Didymos, and Dart make for an interesting computation.
The thing is, an asteroid is not a rigid body. How much of DART's inertia affected the speed of Dimorphos, and how much of it just knocked pieces of Dimorphos off of the main asteroid, and how all of this affected the speeds of both Dimorphos and Didymos is something that is complicated enough that it needs to have that calculation tested.
WirelesslyWired t1_iqyids4 wrote
Reply to comment by JagerBaBomb in After DART: Using the first full-scale test of a kinetic impactor to inform a future planetary defense mission by EricFromOuterSpace
Yes, Newton's laws of motion still hold, although the three body problem is hard to solve. Dimorphos, Didymos, and Dart make for an interesting computation.
The thing is, an asteroid is not a rigid body. How much of DART's inertia affected the speed of Dimorphos, and how much of it just knocked pieces of Dimorphos off of the main asteroid, and how all of this affected the speeds of both Dimorphos and Didymos is something that is complicated enough that it needs to have that calculation tested.