We knew right then, we can do some good science with this," says Ariel Graykowski with the SETI Institute, who works with a global network of telescope enthusiasts.Īll the material ejected out of the asteroid by the impact gave the asteroid an extra kick, says Cheng, in the same way that shooting a bullet out of a gun makes the gun kick back. But telescopes watching the pair of asteroids saw that the impact kicked up a huge amount of dust and rocky debris, brightening the scene. Once the spacecraft hit the surface, it was obliterated, and its stream of pictures stopped. Astronomers got their first good look at it in the final moments of the mission, as the DART spacecraft drew ever closer, sending back images of a gray, egg-shaped asteroid strewn with rubble. NASA, ESA, STScI, and Jian-Yang Li (PSI) Video: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) YouTubeĭimorphos is millions of miles away and about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The journal published a study detailing the results this week, alongside four additional scientific reports on this unprecedented asteroid deflection experiment. The collision altered the path of Dimorphos through space, shortening the time it takes to orbit another, larger asteroid by 33 minutes, according a new analysis in the journal Nature. The experiment has boosted scientists' confidence, he says, that this kind of deflection technique could really work to protect the planet if Earth ever got menaced by a dangerous incoming space rock. "We know this process is really very effective – it's even more effective than a lot of people had originally expected," says Andy Cheng with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. This imagery from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after NASA's DART spacecraft smashed into the asteroid's surface.Īstronomers are still watching that asteroid that NASA whacked with a spacecraft back in September, in the first-ever test of whether an asteroid could be deliberately pushed off-course.Īlmost immediately after NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission sent a golf cart-sized spacecraft crashing into an asteroid called Dimorphos, scientists hailed it as a huge success – and a powerful demonstration that an asteroid's trajectory can be altered.
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