James Webb And Hubble Space Telescope Capture DART Spacecraft Crashing Into The Asteroid

NASA this week made the historic attempt of successfully slamming its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft into an asteroid around 7 million miles away from this planet.

NASA

NASA shared some really cool images of the impact, but it also made sure to observe the impact from afar, using the James Webb Space Telescope as well as the trusty Hubble Space Telescope.

The imagery might not wow you like their imagery often does, however, the images could help reveal a lot of valuable information. They both managed to capture different wavelengths of light -- infrared and visible respectively.

NASA states that observing the data from different wavelengths could help scientists better understand if it were big chunks of material or mostly fine dust that disintegrated from Dimorphos¡¯ surface.

This is crucial since the data can help researchers better understand if crashing into an asteroid can really change its orbit. The end goal is to create a system that can change the path of asteroids that could come crashing on our planet.

The images captured by James Webb Space Telescope are of a ¡®tight compact core¡¯ with ¡®plumes of material appearing¡¯ as ¡®wisps streaming away from the centre of where the impact took place¡¯. JWST captured 10 images over a span of five hours.

It will continue gathering spectroscopic data from the asteroid system in the coming months to allow researchers to better understand the chemical composition of Dismorphos.

It captured this when Dimorphos was travelling at around 14,000 miles per hour -- three times faster than what JWST was designed to track. Yet it managed to do it successfully thanks to the telescope¡¯s flight operations, planning and science teams.

NASA

Hubble, on the other hand, captured the collision with its Wide Field Camera 3. NASA states that the disintegrated material from the impact appeared similar to rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid.

NASA highlights that some rays appeared curved and astronomers will have to analyse the data to better understand what this could signify. As per their initial findings, however, the brightness of the asteroid system increased by three times and this stayed for at least eight hours.

Hubble managed to take 45 images before and after DART¡¯s impact and the asteroid will be observed 10 more times over the coming weeks.

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