When NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, it wasn’t only a thrilling test of planetary defense. It was also a unique opportunity for scientists.
When NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid last year, it wasn’t only a thrilling test of planetary defense. It was also a unique opportunity for scientists to observe an asteroid system and see the effects of the crash, letting them learn more about what asteroids are composed of. Earlier this month, images of the impact captured by the Hubble Space Telescope were released, and now we can see the impact from another view, captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’S VLT).
The Very Large Telescope is a ground-based set of four telescopes located in Chile, which were able to see the aftermath following the DART spacecraft impacting the asteroid Dimorphos. The images show the cloud of debris thrown up by the impact, called the ejecta, between the time just before the impact on 26 September 2022 all the way through to a month later on October 25.
