A few months ago NASA announced the start of what is sought to be the first planetary defense system with the launch of DART a special ship whose objective was to hit a distant asteroid, in order to test the technology necessary to deflect a dangerous asteroid.
Although the impact of DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was registered in September 2022, recently the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope brought to light the first video of how this impact was seen.
DART weighing 545 kilograms hit the asteroid dimorphoswith the aim of altering the trajectory of the asteroid as it orbits its larger companion asteroid dinymoswhich do not represent a risk to Earth.
the movie in time lapse presented by Hubble shows the scene of the collision of the spacecraft DART that collided with the asteroid at 21 thousand kilometers per hourcausing notable damage to the fireball that threw more than 900 thousand kilograms of dust and pieces of debris.
According to the publication of the European Space Agencythe images captured by Hubble provide new clues about how debris is dispersed in a complex pattern in the days after impact.
The images show three stages in the impact of DARTone where an ejection cone forms, the spiraling eddy of debris trapped along the orbit of the asteroid and its companion and the tail swept behind the asteroid by pressure from sunlight.
The film captured by the Hubble Space Telescope It contemplates several hours of recording, hours before the impact and approximately 17 hours after the collision.
In shots captured by the telescope, views of both Dinymos and Dimorphos are offered, and each of the effects that were generated after the crash.
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The space agencies reported that, in 2024, a new launch called the ESA Hera mission is being contemplated, with which a detailed study will be carried out after the impact of the asteroid with the Dimorphos objective. era will turn the large-scale experiment into a repeatable, well-understood planetary defense technique that could one day be used for real.
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