Yesterday humanity made a remarkable first. It traveled 11 million km (6.8 millions miles) away from its home.
After Years of planningNASA’s Double AsteroidRedirection test (DART) finally I was slammed into an moonlet, Dimorphos, orbiting an asteroidDidymos, the first attempt to reroute the path of a large-sized cosmic object.
Images of the looming AsteroidThe video provided a front-seat perspective of the impact moment, but it left us wondering what it might have looked like for a nearby observer.
Now, we have an idea.
DART brought an Italian Space Agency (ASI), cubesat called Light Italian CubeSat to Imaging of Asteroids to monitor the effects and impact on Dimorphos.LICIAcube), equipped with two optical cameras, LEIA and LUKE. The cubesat was deployed prior to impact and was able to capture the entire event.
Here are the images taken by #LICIACubeOf #DARTmission impact on asteroid #Dimorphos.
Scientists and technicians involved in this mission are now beginning to work hard for weeks and months. We will have much more to tell you! pic.twitter.com/kVz1WmcsL7— LICIACube (@LICIACube) September 27, 2022
The large, bright object in the images is Didymos. As a result, the delicately woven lines are dust plumes erupting out of Dimorphos. Images will show how much of the moonlet was damaged by the impact and information about its composition.
This information will allow scientists to design future asteroid-redirecting missions and refine technology based on this information.
“Now science can begin.” Katarina Miljkovic, a planet scientist Curtin University, Australia
The idea of crashing a spacecraft into a rocky object was not for fun. The mission was designed to test our ability to redirect any asteroids we detect on a collision course with Earth in the future – something that in the past, has proven extremely hazardous to any life that happened to be hanging around.
Next is to look out for movement changes in the impacted body. Dimorphis was therefore chosen. The asteroid measures 160m (2,560 ft) in diameter and orbits the Didymos, which is 780 meters wide, approximately once every 11.9 hours, performing a wobbly dance.
We might not be able to detect such a small change with ground-based telescopes if there is only one object that orbits the Sun. It should be possible to study an asteroid with a known orbital period if it is located in the same area.
“From this single impact event, we can learn about the mechanics and momentum transfer of impacts into small bodies as well as the potential for artificial impactors that could be used to push asteroids out their orbits.” says Miljkovic.
“This hasn’t been done before… We needed a large-scale experiment, to get a validation against the real data. This was to ensure that Earth knows what to do if an asteroid is ever heading towards it.
