Nasa asteroid collision created tons of space dust

The deliberate collision of Nasa's Dart spacecraft with the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos is estimated to have displaced over 1,000 tonnes of rock into space.

- VISHWAM SANKARAN

Material from the collision altered Dimorphos' orbit by about 33 minutes, according to research presented during the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in Chicago.

History was made by September's collision, which was the first time humans have altered the course of a heavenly body.

Nasa hoped to find out if future asteroids threatening Earth could be diverted by a deliberate collision, saving the planet from potentially deadly impacts of the kind that once wiped out the dinosaurs.

Dart was launched in November 2021 and spent months traveling to target Dimorphos - a companion asteroid of the larger Didymos - that was travelling through space at a distance of about 6.8 million miles from Earth.