00:03last year nasa did something no one had ever done before they launched a spacecraft on an
00:08intercept course with an asteroid to divert its trajectory the dimorphous asteroid is the smaller
00:13of an orbital pair and on september 26 2022 the 1200 pound dart spacecraft hit its target the
00:19whole thing was meant to test our ability to divert one of these cosmic travelers just in
00:23case one might happen to be on an intercept course with our planet now the space agency
00:27has released time-lapse images of the hours immediately following the impact revealing
00:31some really interesting things the footage shows what they're calling an ejecta cone where the
00:35impact caused debris and dust from the asteroid to be jettisoned into space that cone consists of
00:40what nasa says is nearly two million pounds of dust cleaved from the asteroid itself 17 hours after the
00:46impact hubble captured the asteroid again this time the cone is turned into what looks like a massive
00:50tail of a comet then again days later that same tail appears to have split into two with nasa
00:56researchers saying quote when i first saw these images i couldn't believe these features i thought
01:00maybe the image was smeared or something the redirection test shortened the orbit of dimorphous
01:04around the larger didymus by 32 minutes a much greater impact than nasa's success threshold of just 73 seconds
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