NASA DART mission: See first images of smashed asteroid through Hubble & Webb telescopes

The wait is finally over as NASA’s two best observatories – The Hubble space telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope – have photographed the DART spacecraft’s impact with an asteroid. Short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART is NASA’s mission to artificially deflect a space rock with the objective to develop a planetary defence against an asteroid that might threaten Earth. 

The spacecraft intentionally rammed an asteroid named Dimorphos at 4:44 am IST on September 27 and what lies ahead is the analysis of how much the rock’s speed was affected and to what extent it has been knocked out of its orbit. 

While several images of the spacecraft colliding with the asteroid have already been released, NASA has now shared pictures taken by Hubble and Webb telescopes. Notably, this is the first time these two observatories have targetted one object at the same time. 

Check out Hubble and Webb’s observations of the DART impact

What's also worth noting is that the 160-meter-wide Dimorphos asteroid orbits a bigger asteroid named Didymos which is 780-meter-wide and they together form a binary asteroid system. The Hubble telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 observed the asteroid system in visible light before the impact as well as 22 minutes, five hours and eight hours after the impact. 

(DART's impact captured by the Hubble telescope; Image: NASA)

As time went by, the blue rays of light stretched representing the expansion of plumes of debris ejected by Dimorphos after the collision. Astronomers found that the brightness of the system increased by three times after impact and remained steady even after eight hours. Measuring around 19 metres, the DART spacecraft struck the asteroid at 22,500 km per hour when it was roughly 11 million km away from Earth. 

(Dimorphos observed at 22 minutes, five hours and 8.2 hours after the impact; Image: NASA)

NASA says that Hubble captured 45 images before and after the impact and it will continue to observe the binary asteroid system 10 more times in the next three weeks to study more about the asteroid. 

The image below was captured by the Webb telescope and shows the impact over the course of five hours. Although Webb was able to take 10 pictures of the desecrated asteroid, NASA says photographing it was fairly challenging considering that the target moved three times faster than what Webb can track. 

(DART's impact captured by James Webb telescope; Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)

Taken using the James Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the picture shows plumes of material streaming away from the asteroid's center where the impact took place. In the next few months, scientists will use Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to know more about the composition of Dimorphos.

Image: NASA