Hubble Observes Boulders Escaping After NASA's Asteroid-smashing Mission
Images from the Hubble telescope reveal that when NASA's DART probe successfully knocked an asteroid off course last year, it sent 37 boulders ranging from one to seven meters in size into space. These boulders represent around two percent of the rocks already scattered on the asteroid's surface. The finding suggests that future missions to divert life-threatening asteroids could also result in the ejection of boulders. The boulders are drifting away from the asteroid at a slow speed, allowing the European Space Agency's Hera mission to observe them when it arrives in 2026.