Why are asteroids and comets such weird shapes? Their observations will help scientists understand how much force is needed to successfully divert an asteroid from our planet. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope, and the agency's Lucy spacecraft will also train their lenses on the asteroid to study the impact's aftermath. These won't be the only telescopes put to use to study the impact. The Hawaiian Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System and one of Las Cumbres Observatory's South African telescopes both captured videos of the impact - showing a bright puff of dust and rubble plume from Dimorphos at the moment of impact.

Two other videos were also taken of the crash by two terrestrial telescopes. 'As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,' Adams said at the news conference. Adams said that DART had hit the 525-feet-wide (160 meters) Dimorphos just 56 feet (17 m) from its exact center - an astronomical 'bullseye.' At mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, cheers erupted from the mission scientists.

Watch nasa dart mission crash into