ESA to capture light from deflected asteroid’s new plume

On 26 September, NASA will purposefully crash their DART spacecraft into the 160 m wide Dimorphos asteroid, in the first-ever test of deflection by means of ‘kinetic impact’. The moment the spacecraft collides with the asteroid a plume of material is expected to be thrown into space, which will tell us a great deal about the rock’s composition and how much energy has been transferred to it by the collision. ESA will contribute significantly to ground-based observations of the new plume, as telescopes contracted by the Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre get ready to witness history.