The asteroid that was hit by a NASA probe is currently being followed by thousands of miles of debris from the collision. With a telescope in Chile, astronomers photographed the picture from millions of kilometers away. Their extraordinary finding, made just two days after the planetary defense test last month, was just disclosed by a National Science Foundation facility in Arizona. The picture depicts an extending, comet-like tail of dust and other debris ejected from the impact crater that is more than 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) long.
The pressure from solar radiation is causing the plume to accelerate away from the innocuous asteroid, according to Matthew Knight of the US Naval Research Laboratory, who made the observation alongside Lowell Observatory's Teddy Kareta using the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope. Scientists predict that the tail will grow longer and spread even further, eventually becoming so tenuous that it will be undetected.
At that moment, the material will be like any other dust flying throughout the solar system, according to Knight.
More studies are expected to establish how much and what type of debris was thrown from Dimorphos, a 525-foot (160-meter) moonlet of a bigger asteroid. NASA's Dart spacecraft, which was launched over a year ago, was destroyed in the head-on collision. The $325 million attempt to alter an asteroid's orbit was supposed to serve as a practice run for the day when a deadly rock headed our way. According to NASA, Dimorphos and its companion rock have never posed a threat to Earth and continue to do so.