News Planetary Science

NASA’s DART mission lofted a swarm of boulders into space

Many of the newly liberated rocks will eventually go into their own orbit around the sun

Hubble telescope image showing a blue trail of dust behind the asteroid Dimorphos (also blue), with circles showing new boulders around the asteroid

A trail of dust extends from the asteroid Dimorphos (bright object at left in this Hubble telescope image), which now has 37 previously unseen boulders (circled) traveling alongside it.

NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt/UCLA

By Sid Perkins

When a probe smashed into a small asteroid last year, the collision did more than change the asteroid’s orbit — it blasted a few dozen hefty boulders into space too.