A “meteorite graveyard” spanning thousands of miles has been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing the devastating impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft colliding with the asteroid Dimorphos.
According to NASA, 37 large and small rocks scattered across a vast area of space photographed by Hubble are the result of the DART mission.
NASA’s DART spacecraft before launch and its daring mission – (Photo: NASA).
DART, which stands for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”, is a mission carried out by NASA in September 2022, where the DART spacecraft was tasked with a daring mission to crash into the smaller asteroid Dimorphos, part of the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid pair located 11 million kilometers from Earth.
This experiment aims to prepare for a future emergency mission to redirect another spacecraft towards a space object that could potentially collide with Earth.
Since then, NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency) have been continuously monitoring the results of the experiment.
Immediately upon impact, data indicated that DART successfully shifted Dimorphos slightly, enough to alter its trajectory away from Earth — in the hypothetical scenario that it posed a threat to us.
ESA also discovered some debris following the collision. However, the recent findings from Hubble, published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, may be the most comprehensive and vivid yet.
The debris includes fragments from Dimorphos that have traveled thousands of miles, demonstrating the tremendous force of the daring impact, even though NASA’s DART spacecraft weighed only 600 kilograms, according to Live Science.
Mission operators from NASA describe this discovery as “better than expected.” They will continue to analyze how these fragments were ejected.
- Astonishing Earth-like place on another planet that could be habitable
- Groundbreaking underground technology generating hundreds of megawatts of carbon-free electricity, US Department of Energy takes a leap
- Einstein made 7 predictions about humanity’s future, only 3 have yet to come true and are concerning
