
Photo: NASA/ITA DART's last image of Dimorphos before impact. Photo: NASA, ESA, CSA, Cristina Thomas, Ian Wong An image of the aftermath of DART's collision with Dimorphos, the target asteroid, captured by LICIACube. In photos: An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows Dimorphos in near infrared 4 hours after impact. The Hubble Space Telescope plans to monitor the Didymos-Dimorphos system 10 more times over the next three weeks to understand how the ejecta cloud behaves over time, so more images of the aftermath may be released.What's next: It will take weeks of observing the asteroid duo to precisely determine how much the impact altered Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. Before the collision, scientists estimated that DART's crash would excavate a crater on the asteroid and blast between 22,000 and 220,000 pounds (between 9,979 and 99,790 kilograms) of ejecta, into space.Large streaks of Dimorphos' surface material, also called ejecta, can be seen in the images, as well as what appears to be a crater.They will also be able to detect the durational changes in its orbit around the larger asteroid to measure the effects of the impact.

Given the huge size of Didymos and its moon, ground-based telescopes will be able to detect the asteroid very soon. The Italian space agency released the first images from LICIACube on Tuesday. The killer asteroid will be accompanied by its 500-foot-wide moon, which will be orbiting it.

Photo: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li, Alyssa Pagan Images of Dimorphos captured by the Hubble Space Telescope 22 minutes, 5 hours and 8.2 hours after impact. During the course of the campaign missions, random events will occur, such as solar storms, space debris, flying asteroids, and electrical damage.
