Astronauts hit by DART spacecraft; trail of dust and debris stretching from asteroid

On September 27, an asteroid Dimorphos was hit by NASA's DART Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft. After the crash, a huge trail of dust and debris was seen stretching from the asteroid. The trail will be monitored over the next few months, according to a BBC report by Michael Knight of the US Naval Research Laboratory. The trail is expected to get longer and disperse more.

The Lowell Observatory and the US Naval Academy astronauts took this image of Dimorphos using the 4.1 metre Southern Astrophysical Research SOAR Telescope at NOIRLab's Cerro Tolo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The image shows how the Sun's radiation pressure has pushed the dust trail in one direction. The same phenomena happen in the case of a comet.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we are also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth. The report said that DART was a test to see how prepared humanity is to deal with a potentially destructive celestial object. If there is an asteroid heading for Earth at some point in the future, this technique can be used. Mission lead Andy Rivkin described DART as a very simple idea, ramming the spacecraft into the object you are worried about, and using the mass and speed of the spacecraft to slightly change the orbit of the object, so that it wouldn't hit the Earth.