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By NASA
5 min read
Close-Up Views of NASA’s DART Impact to Inform Planetary Defense
Photos taken by the Italian LICIACube, short for the LICIA Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids. These offer the closest, most detailed observations of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impact aftermath to date. The photo on the left was taken roughly 2 minutes and 40 seconds after impact, as the satellite flew past the Didymos system. The photo on the right was taken 20 seconds later, as LICIACube was leaving the scene. The larger body, near the top of each image is Didymos. The smaller body in the lower half of each image is Dimorphos, enveloped by the cloud of rocky debris created by DART’s impact. NASA/ASI/University of Maryland On Sept. 11, 2022, engineers at a flight control center in Turin, Italy, sent a radio signal into deep space. Its destination was NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft flying toward an asteroid more than 5 million miles away.
The message prompted the spacecraft to execute a series of pre-programmed commands that caused a small, shoebox-sized satellite contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), called LICIACube, to detach from DART.
Fifteen days later, when DART’s journey ended in an intentional head-on collision with near-Earth asteroid Dimorphos, LICIACube flew past the asteroid to snap a series of photos, providing researchers with the only on-site observations of the world’s first demonstration of an asteroid deflection.
After analyzing LICIACube’s images, NASA and ASI scientists report on Aug. 21 in the Planetary Science Journal that an estimated 35.3 million pounds (16 million kilograms) of dust and rocks spewed from the asteroid as a result of the crash, refining previous estimates that were based on data from ground and space-based observations.
While the debris shed from the asteroid amounted to less than 0.5% of its total mass, it was still 30,000 times greater than the mass of the spacecraft. The impact of the debris on Dimorphos’ trajectory was dramatic: shortly after the collision, the DART team determined that the flying rubble gave Dimorphos a shove several times stronger than the hit from the spacecraft itself.
“The plume of material released from the asteroid was like a short burst from a rocket engine,” said Ramin Lolachi, a research scientist who led the study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The important takeaway from the DART mission is that a small, lightweight spacecraft can dramatically alter the path of an asteroid of similar size and composition to Dimorphos, which is a “rubble-pile” asteroid — or a loose, porous collection of rocky material bound together weakly by gravity.
“We expect that a lot of near-Earth asteroids have a similar structure to Dimorphos,” said Dave Glenar, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who participated in the study. “So, this extra push from the debris plume is critical to consider when building future spacecraft to deflect asteroids from Earth.”
The tail of material that formed behind Dimorphos was prominent almost 12 days after the DART impact, giving the asteroid a comet-like appearance, as seen in this image captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in October 2022. Hubble’s observations were made from roughly 6.8 million miles away. NASA, ESA, STScI, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale DART’s Star Witness
NASA chose Dimorphos, which poses no threat to Earth, as the mission target due to its relationship with another, larger asteroid named Didymos. Dimorphos orbits Didymos in a binary asteroid system, much like the Moon orbits Earth. Critically, the pair’s position relative to Earth allowed astronomers to measure the duration of the moonlet’s orbit before and after the collision.
Ground and space-based observations revealed that DART shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by 33 minutes. But these long-range observations, made from 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) away, were too distant to support a detailed study of the impact debris. That was LICIACube’s job.
After DART’s impact, LICIACube had just 60 seconds to make its most critical observations. Barreling past the asteroid at 15,000 miles (21,140 kilometers) per hour, the spacecraft took a snapshot of the debris roughly once every three seconds. Its closest image was taken just 53 miles (85.3 km) from Dimorphos’ surface.
The short distance between LICIACube and Dimorphos provided a unique advantage, allowing the cubesat to capture detailed images of the dusty debris from multiple angles.
The research team studied a series of 18 LICIAcube images. The first images in the sequence showed LICIACube’s head-on approach. From this angle, the plume was brightly illuminated by direct sunlight. As the spacecraft glided past the asteroid, its camera pivoted to keep the plume in view.
This animated series of images was taken by a camera aboard LICIACube 2 to 3 minutes after DART crashed into Dimorphos. As LICIACube made its way past the binary pair of asteroids Didymos, the larger one on top, and Dimorphos, the object at the bottom. The satellite’s viewing angle changed rapidly during its flyby of Dimorphos, allowing scientists o get a comprehensive view of the impact plume from a series of angles. ASI/University of Maryland/Tony Farnham/Nathan Marder As LICIACube looked back at the asteroid, sunlight filtered through the dense cloud of debris, and the plume’s brightness faded. This suggested the plume was made of mostly large particles — about a millimeter or more across — which reflect less light than tiny dust grains.
Since the innermost parts of the plume were so thick with debris that they were completely opaque, the scientists used models to estimate the number of particles that were hidden from view. Data from other rubble-pile asteroids, including pieces of Bennu delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, and laboratory experiments helped refine the estimate.
“We estimated that this hidden material accounted for almost 45% of the plume’s total mass,” said Timothy Stubbs, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard who was involved with the study.
While DART showed that a high-speed collision with a spacecraft can change an asteroid’s trajectory, Stubbs and his colleagues note that different asteroid types, such as those made of stronger, more tightly packed material, might respond differently to a DART-like impact. “Every time we interact with an asteroid, we find something that surprises us, so there’s a lot more work to do,” said Stubbs. “But DART is a big step forward for planetary defense.”
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, managed the DART mission and operated the spacecraft for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office.
By Nathan Marder, nathan.marder@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 21, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
In March 2025, a perfectly smooth metallic sphere crashed near the city of Buga, Colombia, setting in motion a chain of revelations that could rewrite the story of human history. Weighing just 4.5 pounds, the object has no visible seams, joints, or welds. It remains icy cold to the touch and shows no sign of conventional propulsion or manufacturing methods known to science.
Buga Sphere
Its surface is etched with intricate markings eerily similar to symbols from ancient Mesopotamia, as well as other civilizations separated by oceans and thousands of years. AI-assisted analysis suggests the glyphs carry profound themes—unity, transformation, and the origins of consciousness, concepts that cannot easily be reconciled within the framework of standard physics.
Advanced scans have revealed hidden internal structures and an unusually dense core. Even more unsettling, researchers have detected the sphere emitting very low frequency (VLF) and low frequency (LF) radio waves—signals capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers over terrain and far beyond the horizon, often used in navigation, communications, and precise timing synchronization.
Whispers are now spreading about the discovery of a second, even older sphere, quietly stored in a forgotten museum collection. Meanwhile, the glyphs on the Buga sphere appear to be slowly evolving, forming what some believe are coordinates pointing toward remote and mysterious sites: deep within the Amazon, along the shores of Lake Titicaca, and in the highlands of Peru.
This has led to a question, is it just an elaborate hoax or are these spheres fragments of a hidden planetary network, and if so… what happens when it awakens?
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By European Space Agency
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
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By NASA
Explore Webb Webb News Latest News Latest Images Webb’s Blog Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Webb’s First Images Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 6 Min Read NASA’s Webb Finds New Evidence for Planet Around Closest Solar Twin
This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Full illustration and caption shown below. Credits:
Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
Visible only from Earth’s Southern hemisphere, it’s made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.
Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The results have been accepted in a series of two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
If confirmed, the planet would be the closest to Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. However, because the planet candidate is a gas giant, scientists say it would not support life as we know it.
“With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own. Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy center, co-first author on the new papers. “Webb was designed and optimized to find the most distant galaxies in the universe. The operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute had to come up with a custom observing sequence just for this target, and their extra effort paid off spectacularly.”
Image A: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (DSS, Hubble, Webb)
This image shows the Alpha Centauri star system from several different ground- and space-based observatories: the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky, and the closest Sun-like star to Earth. The ground-based image from DSS shows the triple system as a single source of light, while Hubble resolves the two Sun-like stars in the system, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. The image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which uses a coronagraphic mask to block the bright glare from Alpha Centauri A, reveals a potential planet orbiting the star. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, DSS, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) Several rounds of meticulously planned observations by Webb, careful analysis by the research team, and extensive computer modeling helped determine that the source seen in Webb’s image is likely to be a planet, and not a background object (like a galaxy), foreground object (a passing asteroid), or other detector or image artifact.
The first observations of the system took place in August 2024, using the coronagraphic mask aboard MIRI to block Alpha Centauri A’s light. While extra brightness from the nearby companion star Alpha Centauri B complicated the analysis, the team was able to subtract out the light from both stars to reveal an object over 10,000 times fainter than Alpha Centauri A, separated from the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth.
Image B: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (Webb MIRI Image Detail)
This three-panel image captures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observational search for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A. The initial image shows the bright glare of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and the middle panel then shows the system with a coronagraphic mask placed over Alpha Centauri A to block its bright glare. However, the way the light bends around the edges of the coronagraph creates ripples of light in the surrounding space. The telescope’s optics (its mirrors and support structures) cause some light to interfere with itself, producing circular and spoke-like patterns. These complex light patterns, along with light from the nearby Alpha Centauri B, make it incredibly difficult to spot faint planets. In the panel at the right, astronomers have subtracted the known patterns (using reference images and algorithms) to clean up the image and reveal faint sources like the candidate planet. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) While the initial detection was exciting, the research team needed more data to come to a firm conclusion. However, additional observations of the system in February 2025 and April 2025 (using Director’s Discretionary Time) did not reveal any objects like the one identified in August 2024.
“We are faced with the case of a disappearing planet! To investigate this mystery, we used computer models to simulate millions of potential orbits, incorporating the knowledge gained when we saw the planet, as well as when we did not,” said PhD student Aniket Sanghi of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Sanghi is a co-first author on the two papers covering the team’s research.
In these simulations, the team took into account both a 2019 sighting of the potential exoplanet candidate by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the new data from Webb, and considered orbits that would be gravitationally stable in the presence of Alpha Centauri B, meaning the planet wouldn’t get flung out of the system.
Researchers say a non-detection in the second and third round of observations with Webb isn’t surprising.
“We found that in half of the possible orbits simulated, the planet moved too close to the star and wouldn’t have been visible to Webb in both February and April 2025,” said Sanghi.
Image C: Alpha Centauri A Planet Candidate (Artist’s Concept)
This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. In this concept, Alpha Centauri A is depicted at the upper left of the planet, while the other Sun-like star in the system, Alpha Centauri B, is at the upper right. Our Sun is shown as a small dot of light between those two stars. Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.
“If confirmed, the potential planet seen in the Webb image of Alpha Centauri A would mark a new milestone for exoplanet imaging efforts,” Sanghi says. “Of all the directly imaged planets, this would be the closest to its star seen so far. It’s also the most similar in temperature and age to the giant planets in our solar system, and nearest to our home, Earth,” he says. “Its very existence in a system of two closely separated stars would challenge our understanding of how planets form, survive, and evolve in chaotic environments.”
If confirmed by additional observations, the team’s results could transform the future of exoplanet science.
“This would become a touchstone object for exoplanet science, with multiple opportunities for detailed characterization by Webb and other observatories,” said Beichman.
For example, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027 and potentially as early as fall 2026, is equipped with dedicated hardware that will test new technologies to observe binary systems like Alpha Centauri in search of other worlds. Roman’s visible light data would complement Webb’s infrared observations, yielding unique insights on the size and reflectivity of the planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/webb
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 07, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
More than one star contributes to the irregular shape of NGC 6072 – Webb’s newest look at this planetary nebula in the near- and mid-infrared shows what may appear as a very messy scene resembling splattered paint. However, the unusual, asymmetrical scene hints at more complicated mechanisms underway, as the star central to the scene approaches the very final stages of its life and expels shells of material, losing up to 80 percent of its mass.
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