This Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test).
Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the solar system.
The free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at a little more than a half-mile per hour.
The discovery yields invaluable insights into the behaviour of a small asteroid when it is hit by a projectile for the purpose of altering its trajectory.
DART was a groundbreaking mission that crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos with the aim of changing its orbit – testing out whether a similar approach could be used to deflect a similar object headed for Earth.
