Thanks to stunning observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists continue to be amazed by NASA’s DART mission – this time in the form of a swarm of rocks that appear to have fallen from the target asteroid at the time of impact.

Last September, NASA launched a mission that might at first glance contradict everything we know about space exploration. The agency launched a spacecraft directly into an asteroid. Not protected. But this metallic adventurer, DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, had a very important purpose: It was NASA’s first step in developing an ambitious planetary defense system.

In summary, the purpose of DART is to emergency landing of the ship A relatively small asteroid called Dimorphos will change its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. The mission seems like not only a great achievement, but a gift that keeps on giving. Since then we I learned quite a lot about the impact of space rocks and how the futuristic mechanism to protect Earth might one day work exactly.

And on Thursday, July 20, NASA announced that DART has once again provided us with some intriguing insights from beyond the grave. Using the powerful optics of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered that when the probe hit Dimorphos at about 22,530 km/h, it created a “swarm of rocks.” And the agency says it’s quite possible that these fragments came from the asteroid itself.

“This tells us what happens the first time you hit an asteroid and see the material coming out at the largest sizes,” said David Jewitt, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the impact. Said. DART GAME. “The rocks are some of the faintest things ever seen in our solar system.”

However, to be clear, the press release for these results suggests that the rocks probably didn’t fly out of Dimorphos as a result of the DART impact, but rather they already existed on the asteroid’s surface and were simply dispersed due to the impact. In fact, the last image of an asteroid A DART taken two seconds before impact shows such mini rocks and debris already present on Dimorphos.

The ejection of the rocks may have been caused by the so-called launch smoke created by the impact, or by a seismic wave that shook the rocks, according to NASA’s statement. (The latter would be similar to what happens when you hit a loose rocky surface with a hammer and cause small pebbles to vibrate freely across the surface.)

This high-resolution image of Dimorphos was created using images taken by DART during its orbit towards the asteroid’s surface. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL)

As for the rocks themselves, Jewitt and his fellow researchers identified 37 loosely dispersed rocks ejected from Dimorphos, ranging in size from three feet to 22 feet (0.9 meters to 6.7 meters), with a total mass of about 0.1% of the asteroid’s mass. Objects appeared to be moving away from their source at just over half a mile per hour (0.8 km/h), which NASA compares to “roughly the speed at which a giant tortoise walks.”

“This is an impressive observation – much better than I expected,” said Jewitt. “We see a cloud of rock carrying mass and energy from the impact target. The number, size, and shape of the rocks are consistent with the fall from the surface of Dimorphos at the time of impact.”

“If we track the rocks during future Hubble observations, we may have enough data to pinpoint the trajectories of the rocks,” Jewitt added. And then we’ll look at which directions they’re thrown off the surface.”