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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) planetary defense test mission finally reached its goal last night, approaching the asteroid Dimorphos and impacting its surface. It is the first attempt in human history to deflect a rocky body from its orbital trajectory, and as such this mission will remain in history.
The probe’s journey lasted 10 months, it took so many to cover the 11 million kilometers that distanced us from its surface. The goal was to change the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, a rocky body of 160 meters in diameter that rotates around the larger Didymos, to show that in case of need, man would be able to deflect it just enough to avert it. an impact with our planet.
Eventually the impact occurred at 1:14 in our time zone, when the DART probe crashed at a speed of approximately 24,000 km / h against its surface. Here is a GIF that shows us the last seconds before the impact with Dimorphos.
As clearly visible from the clip, during the final moments experienced by the spacecraft before the impact, the imager instrument called DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation) captured the last frames that immortalize its final approach, while the asteroid was filling the field of vision more and more. The 30 second video is speeded up and actually covers the last 5 minutes and 30 seconds of the probe.
To observe everything in real time there was also something Italian, namely the LICIACube satellite (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids) which collected data images about 50 km away from the impact area. At the moment nothing has been shared with me but the first data could arrive in the next few days, or even new images of the impact and of the matter expelled after the explosion. Now the investigative team will observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that the DART impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to reduce Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or about 10 minutes.
So Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, commented on the success of the DART mission.
“In essence, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a unity mission with real benefit to all of humanity. While NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we are also working to protect that. home and this international collaboration has turned science fiction into science, demonstrating a way to protect the Earth. “
In addition to the data arriving in the coming days, the DART mission will only be the start of a larger project, which will culminate in ESA’s Hera project in about four years. thanks to which detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos will be conducted, with a particular focus on the crater left by the DART collision and a precise measurement of the mass of Dimorphos. More details in the coming days, with the arrival of new images from LICIACube.
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Here you are one of the first images shared by the Italian satellite LICIACube, which is incredible for the amount of detail it manages to show. A total of 620 photos were taken and which will be made available in the next few days, but in the meantime this shot highlights the cloud of debris and dust after the impact, illuminated by the sunlight. More details on the mission in the original article, available just above .
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