Per week or two after a NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid, scientists have noticed one thing sudden: The space rock has grown two tails.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Take a look at (DART) mission walloped a small asteroid known as Dimorphos on Sept. 26 to check a possible method for shielding Earth from an asteroid on a collision course with our planet. Inside two days, radiation stress from the sun pushed the affect particles into a tail, like that of a comet, some 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) lengthy.
However now a brand new picture from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals that Dimorphos has sprouted not one, however two tails, a improvement NASA personnel known as “sudden” in a statement (opens in new tab).
Associated: Asteroid impact: Here’s the last thing NASA’s DART spacecraft saw before it crashed
If the asteroid itself is the middle of a clock, DART got here in from 10 o’clock. The brilliant strains at 1 o’clock, 7 o’clock and 10 o’clock aren’t particles; these are diffraction spikes brought on by Hubble’s optics. The 2 tails seem at 2 o’clock and three o’clock, in accordance with a statement (opens in new tab) from the European Area Company, a companion on the Hubble mission.
The second tail developed someday between Oct. 2 and Oct. 8, the NASA assertion notes. Hubble has noticed the asteroid 18 occasions for the reason that affect.
Astronomers have seen comparable twin tails develop in comets, so the event is not a total shock. Nonetheless, scientists aren’t positive but precisely how the second tail fashioned, in accordance with NASA.
The truth that Dimorphos misplaced sufficient materials to type such a big tail displays the severity of the affect. The DART mission’s principal objective was to measure how a lot time the collision minimize from Dimorphos’ orbit round a bigger asteroid named Didymos. The mission was required to shorten the orbit, initially 11 hours and 55 minutes, by 73 seconds, though scientists estimated earlier than arrival that the change may have been as a lot as tens of minutes. As an alternative, the orbit has shortened by 32 minutes, mission personnel introduced earlier this month.
E mail Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or comply with her on Twitter @meghanbartels (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).
