The Dimorphos ejecta plume properties revealed by LICIACube. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38418881/)

These scientists sent a spacecraft called DART to crash into a small asteroid moon called Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos. They wanted to see what would happen when the spacecraft hit Dimorphos.

After the crash, the scientists used telescopes on Earth and the Hubble Space Telescope to watch what happened. They saw that the brightness of the Didymos system increased a lot right after the impact, and then went back to normal after about 24 days. The Hubble Space Telescope showed that the material that was ejected from the impact site formed a complex pattern around Dimorphos.

The scientists also had a small satellite called LICIACube that was already in space near Dimorphos. This satellite took pictures of the impact from just before it happened until a few minutes after. They saw that the material ejected from the impact site formed a cone shape, and it had different colors and speeds. Some pieces were moving slowly, while others were moving very fast.

Overall, the scientists learned a lot about what happens when a spacecraft crashes into an asteroid moon, and how the debris spreads out around the asteroid.

Dotto E., Deshapriya JDP., Gai I., Hasselmann PH., Mazzotta Epifani E., Poggiali G., Rossi A., Zanotti G., Zinzi A., Bertini I., Brucato JR., Dall'Ora M., Della Corte V., Ivanovski SL., Lucchetti A., Pajola M., Amoroso M., Barnouin O., Campo Bagatin A., Capannolo A., Caporali S., Ceresoli M., Chabot NL., Cheng AF., Cremonese G., Fahnestock EG., Farnham TL., Ferrari F., Gomez Casajus L., Gramigna E., Hirabayashi M., Ieva S., Impresario G., Jutzi M., Lasagni Manghi R., Lavagna M., Li JY., Lombardo M., Modenini D., Palumbo P., Perna D., Pirrotta S., Raducan SD., Richardson DC., Rivkin AS., Stickle AM., Sunshine JM., Tortora P., Tusberti F., Zannoni M. The Dimorphos ejecta plume properties revealed by LICIACube. Nature. 2024 Feb 28. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06998-2.