The observation made with James Webb and Hubble of the DART mission, where NASA aims to remove an asteroid from its orbit, was shared. Telescopes showed that large amounts of dust and rock fragments were ejected into space after the collision.
One of the greatest unseen and unaware of humanity’s dangers, a large meteor that could strike the Earth, had mobilized the scientific world years ago. In this context, NASA has planned its mission called ‘DART’ and the first contact of an asteroid to disrupt its orbit had accomplished.
A special spacecraft developed during last night’s contact, which is actually no threat to our Earth It was sent to the asteroid named ‘Dimorphos’. The spacecraft successfully crashed into the asteroid. While the post-collision images could not be taken by the vehicle, of course, new photos came from an important place today.
This is how the spacecraft hit the asteroid:
- James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope, which was sent to space in December and started its operations recently, observed the meteorite and spacecraft sent by NASA to perform the DART mission this time. Moreover, this observation was made simultaneously with the Hubble Space Telescope. Two telescopes, thus focused on the same target at the same time for the first time.
In the images in question, after the collision with the meteorite, the scattering from the meteorite into space trace of dust and particles can be seen. However, both Hubble’s and Webb’s lenses begin to see the structure more brightly due to these particles scattering into space with the collision.
image of the James Webb Space Telescope, the period from just before the collision to 5 hours after while Hubble is collision-free. After 22 minutes, 5 hours and 8.2 hours is showing. NASA announced that the same meteorite system will continue to be observed by Webb and the chemical structure of Dimorphos will be studied.
Source :
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact/