Here’s a short clip I put together of the DART “planetary defense” mission. NASA sent a spacecraft directly into the smaller member of a binary asteroid system to test our ability to redirect its path if it ever becomes necessary.

The bottom view is from the onboard camera on the impacting spacecraft, and the top view shows the observation of the event through the James Webb Space Telescope !

What is interesting here is the ejecta, or the material tossed into space by the enormous energy of the event, can clearly be seen. I looped the limited frames (only 10) so the motion is clearly visible. I downloaded the raw data and compiled it myself into this video.

How cool is this? As DART collides with the asteroid the last image is only partially downloaded. From JWST’s view, the explosion looks rather massive.

Nice work NASA, chalk one up for humanity.

Acknowledgement:
NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST
NASA / Johns Hopkins APL

#astrophotography #astronomy #telescope #nightsky #outerspace #deepsky #cosmos #thevastreaches #stars #stargazing #physics #longexposure #space #universe #science #nebula #nasa #asteroid #jwst #crash #collision #spaceflight

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