Planetary Defense Test Deflected An Asteroid But Unleashed a Boulder Swarm

A UCLA-led study of NASA's DART mission found that the collision launched a cloud of boulders from its surface. "The boulder swarm is like a cloud of shrapnel expanding from a hand grenade," said Jewitt, lead author of the study and a UCLA professor of earth and planetary sciences. "Because those big boulders basically share the speed of the targeted asteroid, they're capable of doing their own damage." From a news release: In September 2022, NASA deliberately slammed a spacecraft into the aster