NASA DART mission: Watch spacecraft obliterate asteroid through Hubble telescope

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year was a smashing success, literally. The DART asteroid intentionally rammed into an asteroid moonlet named Dimorphos on September 27, 2022 and proved that a space rock's trajectory can be changed artificially. According to the data collected post-impact, the orbit of Dimorphos (560 feet) which revolves around a bigger asteroid named Didymos (780 feet) was changed by 33 minutes. 

Numerous pictures and videos surfaced showing the aftermath of the collision, and the one which is going viral now are visuals captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. 

Lights, camera, impact! 🎥

Last year, @NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into a non-threatening asteroid to test if they could change its orbit.

Hubble captured the impact and its aftermath, as seen in this time-lapse video: https://t.co/NuSMQs2sNV pic.twitter.com/VBlzhsWRAf

— Hubble (@NASAHubble) March 1, 2023

Hubble telescope documents DART's success

The clip above shows both Dimorphos and Didymos visible as one bright blue object followed by the ejection of an enormous amount of dust after the 545 kg DART collides with the former at speeds over 22,000 km per hour. NASA says that Hubble began observing the asteroid about 1.3 hours before the impact and the first post-impact visuals are two hours after the collision. 

The collision caused dust and debris to be released into outer space at a speed of about 6.5 km per hour, fast enough to escape the asteroid's gravity. Scientists estimate that Dimorphos shed as much as one million kg of debris and left a 10,000 km long trail. Using Hubble, scientists were able to watch the dust blow off and form a comet-like tail by the pressure of sunlight on the tiny dust particles. This tail later split into two over the next few days. 

The idea behind launching DART was to develop technologies that could one day prevent a fate similar to the dinosaurs. With the success of DART, the European Space Agency (ESA) has planned to launch its HERA mission in 2024 to explore the obliterated Dimorphos up close. Based on the resulting data, scientists would scale up DART's version and develop a planetary defence mechanism to save from a planet-killing asteroid if one such day ever comes.