IT Home September 30th News NASA made history this week, with its DART (Dual Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft successfully hit an asteroid called Dimorphos nearly 7 million miles away, trying to change the orbit of the asteroid through kinetic energy impact, the first time in the world has been conducted to defend the Earth from the threat of asteroid impact.
Previously, NASA shared some images of impact. Now James Webber and Hubble Space Telescope have also taken this planetary defense test from a distance. Although the pictures do not look as stunning as the various galaxies they took before, these pictures can reveal a lot of valuable information.
This is the first time that the same object target and the James Webb telescope are simultaneously observed. NASA says the data they capture will help researchers learn more about the history and composition of the solar system. They will be able to use this information to understand the surface of Dimofus (about the asteroid), how much material is ejected after DART hits it, and how fast it is.
James Webb and Hubble collect light at different wavelengths ( infrared and visible light respectively). NASA said being able to observe data from multiple wavelengths will help scientists figure out whether large chunks of matter have been knocked off the surface of Dimofus, which can help researchers figure out whether crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid will change its orbit.
According to NASA's preliminary findings, the brightness of the asteroid tripled after the impact, and this brightness level remains unchanged for at least 8 hours. Hubble took 45 pictures immediately before and after the DART impact. It will make another 10 observations of the asteroid system over the next few weeks.
IT Home learned that the experimental subject selected by NASA this time is a "dual asteroid" system. The impacted asteroid has a diameter of 160 meters. It rotates around another asteroid with a diameter of 780 meters. The two asteroids are about 1 kilometer apart.
