Hubble captured the result of the impact.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope spotted twin tails of dust emanating from the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system. Last month, the NASA Dart spacecraft slammed itself into a distant asteroid in a test of the world’s first planetary defense system, designed to prevent a potential doomsday meteorite collision with Earth. Hubble captured the result of the impact.
The crash data shows that DART shortened Dimorphos’ original 11-hour and 55-minute orbit around Didymos by about 32 minutes. The mission was designed to determine whether a spacecraft capable of altering an asteroid’s trajectory through intense kinetic force is enough to keep our planet out of harm’s way.
Hubble’s repeated observations over the past few weeks have allowed scientists to offer a more complete picture of how the system’s debris clouds have evolved over time, according to a NASA press release. Observations show that the ejected matter, or “ejecta,” expanded and faded in brightness as the time after the impact was largely expected. Twin tails are an unexpected development, although similar behavior is commonly seen in comets and active asteroids. Hubble observations provide the best-quality image of the double-tail to date.
Hubble has made 18 observations of the system so far. The image indicates a second tail formed between October 2 and October 8.
“The relationship between the comet-like tail and other ejecta features seen many times in images from Hubble and other telescopes is still unclear and is something the investigation team is currently working to understand. The northern tail is newly developed.” In the coming months, scientists will take a closer look at Hubble’s data to determine how the second tail evolved. There are several possible scenarios that the team will investigate,” the release said.