NASA’s DART planetary defense test hit an asteroid. Watch what happened next.

1998 blockbuster Armageddon was about NASA’s fictitious final attempt to stop an asteroid accelerating toward Earth.

Now, 25 years later, the US Space Agency has released a video showing what an asteroid impact really looks like.

Shortly after the DART mission (NASA’s first asteroid targeting exercise), the Hubble Space Telescope captured changes over time as space rock ejected more than 1,000 tons of debris. The timelapse shown below shows rock and dust ejected in complex patterns for days after the impact.

“We’ve never witnessed an object collide with an asteroid in real time in a binary asteroid system, which is truly amazing,” said Jian-Yang Li, who led the study published in the journal. Nature In a statement about the mission(opens in new tab)“There’s too much going on here. It takes time to figure it out.”

Hubble was able to record a much wider field of view than Italy’s LICIACube satellite can see. The satellite passed through the wreckage just minutes after the DART impact.

NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a harmless asteroid on September 26, 2022 through the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, better known as DART. Collision course with Earth.

A few weeks later, astronomers reported that the experiment was effective and gave Earthlings a little peace of mind. We measured how a collision with Dimorphus changed its trajectory. We found that the travel time around Didymos was reduced by about 32-33 minutes.

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5 papers published in the journal Nature On March 1st, we will confirm that the mission worked(opens in new tab) And start answering why the smash was successful(opens in new tab) When changing the orbit of an asteroid. The experiment greatly exceeded their expectations that he would reduce orbital time by 10 minutes.

“There’s too much going on here. It takes time to understand.”

The unnamed spacecraft weighing about 1,300 pounds carried no explosives. Its “weapon” was its own body, the power to ram it into an asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour. Scientists liken the mission to driving golf carts to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

But it was a slap heard around the solar system.

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The key, according to new research, is that it wasn’t just the probe that pushed Demorphos.When an asteroid flew crushed rock, it sustained a kickback(opens in new tab) Almost four times the momentum of the first hit, similar to how a shooter feels after firing a gun.

Without cameos by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, Hubble’s film shows three major stages after the crash: the formation of a blast cone, and a wreckage windmill that is surprisingly tied to asteroid companion Didymos. , and the swept tail behind the asteroid.

The first post-impact snapshot of the timelapse captures debris flying away at over 4 mph. That’s fast enough to escape the asteroid’s gravitational pull. Approximately 17 hours after exposure, Blast’s cone begins to morph into various structures, including a spiral pinwheel.(opens in new tab).

“When I first saw these images, I couldn’t believe these features,” Li said in a statement.(opens in new tab)“I thought maybe the image was dirty or something.”

The asteroid then grows a comet-like tail of debris. In a mysterious event, it splits into two tails for several days.

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Scientists say the DART crash will enable more years of research.(opens in new tab) They continue to observe the debris and await follow-up missions.European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft(opens in new tab) To see the crater up close, it will appear in Demorphos after three years.

The mission is an important first step in an international effort to prepare for this kind of existential threat, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said last year.

“NASA is prepared for whatever the universe throws at us.