The DART mission was the first test in space for the world’s planetary defense.
Two of NASA’s space telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, captured views of the DART spacecraft intentionally crashing into an asteroid earlier this week.
On Tuesday, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) deliberately crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos about 9.6 million kilometers from Earth, crashing into the rock at 22,500 kilometers per hour. The experiment was the first test in space for the world’s planetary defense. It was also the first time that the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope simultaneously observed the same celestial target, according to the US space agency.
On Instagram, NASA stated that images and video taken with James Webb’s near-infrared camera show a compact, compact core with “filament-like plumes of material receding” from where it take place the impact.
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The space agency also added that observing the impact of the Dart mission with Webb was a “unique challenge”. “Asteroid Dimorphos was moving at a speed more than 3 times faster than the original speed limit for which Webb was designed! In the weeks leading up to the impact, the teams carefully tested how they would accomplish the task” , he added in the caption.
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The Hubble telescope, on the other hand, captured images taken 22 minutes, five hours and 8.2 hours after the impact, NASA said. Photos taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 show the mission’s impact in visible light.
“Hubble images show motion of Dimorphos ejecta after impact. The ejecta appear as jets extending from the asteroid,” the caption of the Instagram post read.
“Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, according to a news release.
“For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured images of the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was struck by a spacecraft after a journey of seven million miles. All of humanity is eagerly awaiting the discoveries to come from Webb . Hubble and our ground-based telescopes, on the DART mission and beyond,” added Nelson.
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Now, according to NASA, the Webb and Hubble observations together will allow scientists to gain insights into the nature of Dimorphos’ surface, the amount of material ejected by the collision and how quickly it was ejected. Combining this information, along with ground-based telescope observations, will help scientists understand how effectively a kinetic impact can alter an asteroid’s orbit, the space agency said in its press release.