Space probe’s collision with asteroid: Study assesses ejecta momentum enhancement

On September 26, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, a moonlet of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos, at 14,000 miles per hour. Prior to the impact, engineers and scientists performed an experiment to study the cratering process that produces the mass of ejected materials and measures the subsequent momentum enhancement of the impact.