The image, released Thursday, is one of 18 observations the Hubble Telescope has made for the Didymos-Demorphos asteroid system since NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, Mission crashed a probe at Demorphos in September.
“Repeated observations from Hubble over the past several weeks have allowed scientists to provide a more complete picture of how the system’s debris cloud has evolved over time,” according to a statement from NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly operate Hubble.
“Observations show that the ejecta, or ‘ballistics,’ have broadened and faded in brightness over time after impact, as is largely expected,” the statement read. Common in comets and active asteroids. Hubble observations provide the best double-tail image quality to date.”
Scientists are working to understand the importance of splitting the tail. NASA has indicated that the northern tail is the newly created one, and scientists will use data from Hubble in the coming months to examine more closely how it formed.
Demorphos, the target of NASA’s DART mission, is a smaller asteroid orbiting the larger Didymus. Astronomers predicted that the mission could be considered a success if the impact of the DART spacecraft could shorten Demorphos’ orbit by 10 seconds. But this month, NASA revealed that It was able to shrink its trajectory by 32 seconds – from a run of 11 hours 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes.
The DART mission was the first in the world to be conducted on behalf of Planetary Defense, With the goal of testing technology that could one day be used to deflect an asteroid bound for Earth. The mission was also the first time humanity had intentionally altered the motion of an object in space.