The moment of impact
This image, taken by the Italian-built LICIACube, shows the immediate aftermath of NASA’s DART spacecraft smashing into the Dimorphos asteroid. The tentacle-like plumes surprised astronomers, but the mission to deflect an asteroid worked, as DART managed to shove the non-threatening object by a few dozen feet. “Each rectangle represents a different level of contrast in order to better see fine structure in the plumes,” according to the European Space Agency.
