DART spawns space boulders
The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of asteroid Dimorphos on December 19, 2022, revealing a batch of boulders dislodged by NASA’s DART mission impact four months earlier (this image was finally made public in July). These faint objects, ranging from three to 22 feet in size, are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed within our solar system and are slowly drifting from the asteroid at just over half a mile per hour. This unexpected discovery provides critical insights into the reaction of a small asteroid when struck with the intention to modify its trajectory.
