Big Impact

NASA recently released this sequence of images captured by Hubble Space Telescope when the DART spacecraft rammed into the small asteroid Dimorphos, on September 26, 2022. In the top image, snapped just two hours after impact, "spikes" containing roughly 1,000 tons of dust radiate from the asteroid. In the second image, 17 hours after impact, the spikes have been sculpted by the gravity of the asteroid's larger companion, Didymos. And in the final panel, radiation from the Sun pushes material into twin tails that stretch thousands of miles from Dimorphos. Follow-up observations have confirmed that DART deflected the asteroid's orbit, suggesting that asteroids on course to slam into Earth might be deflected as well. [NASA/ESA/STScI/J. Li (PSI)]