About a year after it was launched, NASA’s “empty” spacecraft was destroyed when it collided with an asteroid that was speeding toward the planet Earth.
In case a dangerous rock were to go our way, the $325 million effort to change the asteroid’s trajectory functioned as a test run.
The image was picked up by astronomers using a telescope in Chile from millions of miles distant. Currently being tracked is the asteroid that was impacted by a NASA spacecraft and covered in thousands of kilometres of impact debris.
Their exact observation was launched two days following a planetary defence test conducted last month at the Arizona laboratory of the National Science Foundation.
The debris and other components ejected by the collision were visible in the photos as a long, extended comet-like tail that was more than 10,000 kilometres long.
According to Matthew Knight of the US Naval Research Laboratory and Teddy Caretta of the Lowell Observatory, who made the observation using the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope, this plume is rushing away from the inert asteroid in large part because of pressure from solar radiation.
The tail is anticipated to grow longer and more dispersed before eventually becoming undetectable.
The asteroid “Demorphos” and the pebbles it is accompanied by have not and will not pose a threat to Earth, according to NASA.
What transpired to the asteroid “Demorphos” when NASA purposefully crashed with it?
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