The DART mission is the world’s first space experiment to protect the planet.
Two of NASA’s space telescopes – the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope – captured views of the Spaceship DART deliberately crashed into an asteroid earlier this week.
On Tuesday, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) purposely crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos about 9.6 million kilometers from Earth, slamming into rocks at 22,500 kilometers per hour. The test was the world’s first space-based test to protect the planet. It is also the first time that the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have simultaneously observed the same celestial target, according to the US space agency.
Taking to Instagram, NASA states that images and videos taken from James Webb’s near-infrared camera show a tight, compact core with “bubbles of matter appearing like waves flowing away” from where the impact occurs.
Take a look below:
The space agency also added that observing the impact of the Dart Mission with Webb was a “unique challenge”. “Asteroid Dimorphos was moving at 3 times faster than the original limit speed. Webb was designed for tracking! In the weeks before the collision, the teams carefully examined whether how will they accomplish the task,” it added in the caption.
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The Hubble telescope, on the other hand, captured images taken 22 minutes, 5 hours and 8.2 hours after the impact, NASA said. This image from Hubble’s wide-field camera 3 shows the mission’s impact in visible light.
“Hubble image shows the movement of the ejection mass from the Dimorphos after impact. The ejection appears as rays extending from the asteroid,” the Instagram post captioned.
“Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together,” said Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator. press note.
“For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured images from the same target in space: an asteroid hit by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey. All mankind is eagerly awaited. discoveries come from Webb, Hubble and our ground-based telescopes – on the DART mission and beyond,” added Mr. Nelson.
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Now, according to NASA, observations from Webb and Hubble together will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the surface nature of the Dimorphos, the amount of matter ejected by the collision, and the speed its. The space agency said in its press release, combining this information with observations with ground-based telescopes will help scientists understand the dynamics that could change the orbit of the spacecraft. how efficient an asteroid is.
