It apparently happened very quickly.
Because of all the different interactions with sunlight, the YORP effect leads to an overall rotation of an asteroid. The effect is incredibly small, but asteroids themselves aren't very big either, and over the course of millions of years, the YORP effect can go from a gentle nudge to a massive spin.
Some of that material naturally calmed down a little and rained back down onto Didymos, but some stayed in orbit. There, the dust and ice particles stuck together through electrostatic attraction — the sameEventually, the ring of particles coalesced into a series of minimoons, which the researchers call"satellitesimals." These satellitesimals, each no bigger than a few meters across, then interacted and collided with one another.
But if the formation of Dimorphos took less than a year, it should be spinning rapidly and have an oblate shape, just like its parent. The reason for this is that with every collision of one satellitesimal onto the ever-growing main body, it would add a bit of angular momentum, causing it to spin faster and faster.
The Hubble Space Telescope captured the plume from the aftermath of DART smashing into the surface of the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022.
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