A NASA spaceship hit an asteroid, turning it into a "watermelon."
Dart was designed to demonstrate that a well-aimed object might deflect an asteroid.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and partner universities launched the Dart mission at 23,000km/h into the asteroid Dimorphos.
NASA wants to test planetary defenses by seeing if a large collision could change an asteroid's trajectory.
When Dart hit, things got interesting."
Previously a potato-shaped 'oblate spheroid', Naidu now calls it "a ‘triaxial ellipsoid' – something more like an oblong watermelon."
"The Dart mission and analysis revealed the complicated dynamics and alterations to binary asteroid systems after a kinetic impact.
Dimorphos now orbits the larger Didymos asteroid unstable and stretched, according to scientists.