Images of an asteroid hit captured by the NASA

Recently, spectacular images from the final stage of NASA’s DART mission have been captured by space telescopes. 

Asteroids bamming into planets and destroying everything after catastrophic waves are a common theme of all post-apocalyptic movies.

However, the scientists at many reputed and heavily funded space agencies like NASA and European Space Agency believe that it is very much possible for a large asteroid to hit the Earth. Therefore, to defend the planet, they came up with a mission, named NASA’s DART mission. Well, the first images from its trial space flight have just come in. 

What is NASA’s DART mission? 

Apparently, there is a slight possibility that an asteroid might fatally hit our planet and drive the extinction of our species. So, the scientists at NASA came up with a technical theory that colliding with a large satellite, moving at a top speed of hundreds of kilometers per second, can deter the path of the asteroid, thereby rescuing humanity from being wiped out. 

This mission was termed DART i.e. Double Asteroid Redirection Test. In order to test their theories, it was planned that a large spacecraft will be sent toward a moving asteroid Dimorphos, which was moving approximately 11 million kilometers away from Earth.

The spacecraft carried a camera that would capture images of Dimorphos and its big brother Didymos, around which Dimorphos has been rotating. The DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid, leading to a slight change in its path which can compound into a total deviation of its trajectory away from the Earth. This was the DART mission. 

Are these asteroids dangerous? 

Thankfully, the asteroid duo Dimorphos and Didymos is not dangerous for the Earth. That’s why they were probably selected as the target for the 1st test of the DART mission. According to the experts, the Dimorphos weighs around 1000kg whereas its ‘enemy’, i.e. the DART satellite weighs a mere 250kg.

Moreover, funnily enough, bamming the satellite into the large asteroid is like throwing a golf ball at the large Egyptian Pyramid. Hence, it was interesting to see whether such a small object can deter the path of a disproportionately large object. 

The type of images captured by the space telescopes. 

Well, the humans’ new lenses in space, the Hubble Telescope, and the James Webb Telescope have captured the images of the target asteroid Dimorphos 20 minutes, 4 hours, and 9 hours after the impact. The sight was truly worth beholding, according to the scientists.

The whole wave of dust, small matter pieces, and gases burst out from the epicenter of the hit. They circled around the Dimorphos instantly while the asteroid duo was engulfed completely in dust and gases. The DART spacecraft was completely destroyed.

Though it did send truly spectacular pics of the asteroid’s surface a few moments before the collision, the exact amount of damage inflicted on the asteroid and its trajectory can be gauged only after analyzing pics from the space telescopes duo. 

The astrophysicists line up to get some time slots on these telescopes so they can confirm their hypothesis or gather more information for their ongoing experiments. Therefore, it wasn’t easy to align both space Telescopes in one direction to observe the effects of the collision.

The images captured by the James Webb Telescope are red because they were taken in an infrared region of light. This very quality allows the telescope to peep deep into space. On the other hand, the Hubble Telescope captured images in blue because its cameras work solely in the visible regions. 

What will be the aftermath of this mission? 

So far, the images that have been captured portray beyond any doubt that the DART spacecraft hit the bull’s eye. But, this is not a reason to pop the champagne yet because the true motive of the DART mission was to detour the asteroid from its current trajectory.

In order to track the asteroid’s trajectory after the collision with the spacecraft, scientists will have to wait for some time. Only after the dust is spread out thinly enough for the space telescopes to peek into that place, will we be able to determine the extent of damage to the asteroid. Also, the researchers like Alan.

Read More: NASA’s space defense system- DART.

Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast involved in observations with the ATLAS project, said that it will be easier to gauge the change in the asteroid’s trajectory if the DART spacecraft had hit hard. So in short, this experiment will also guide the researchers about the speed with which they need to launch these satellites in order to detour the trajectories of threatening objects in large proportions.