CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida –
The world now has stunning new photos of this week’s asteroid strike, the first test of planetary defense of its kind.
On Thursday, NASA released images of the dramatic event taken by the Hubble and Webb space telescopes.
Telescopes on seven continents also watched as NASA’s Dart spacecraft slammed into the harmless space rock, 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth on Monday, hoping to alter its orbit.
Scientists won’t know the precise change until November; The results of the demonstration are expected to instill confidence in using the technique against a killer asteroid headed our way one day.
“This is an unprecedented view of an unprecedented event,” Johns Hopkins University planetary astronomer and mission leader Andy Rivkin said in a statement.
All these images will help scientists learn more about the small asteroid Dimorphos, which took the hit and ended up with a large crater. The impact sent streams of rock and dirt into space, appearing as bright jets emanating in the latest photos.
The brightness of this double asteroid system — the 525-foot (160-meter) Dimorphos is actually the moon around a larger asteroid — tripled in brightness after the impact as seen in images from Hubble, according to NASA.
Hubble and Webb will continue to observe Dimorphos and its large companion Didymos in the coming weeks.
The $325 million Dart mission launched last year. The spacecraft was built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
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