As we await news on whether NASA has been successful in changing the course of an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it, it’s emerged that the collision caused a huge debris trail around 6,000 miles long.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft intentionally slammed into Dimorphos — the harmless asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos — as part of a planetary defense mission aimed at testing technology to protect Earth from hazardous asteroids in the future. One of those who used SOAR to capture the image, astronomer Teddy Kareta, commented: “It’s amazing how clearly we were able to capture the structure and extent of the aftermath in the days following the impact.”
Data from the observations will help scientists to learn about the surface of the Dimorphos asteroid, how much material was kicked up by the crash, the speed at which it was ejected, and whether the force of the collision resulted in the release of large chunks of material or mainly fine dust.