Vehicle The space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) NASA claimed to have managed to have a significant impact on asteroids Abode that hit.
This was revealed by the first images of the DART mission obtained by the Light Italian Cubesat for Asteroid Imaging spacecraft (LICIACube) uploaded by the Italian Space Agency (ISA) on Tuesday (27/9).
The image was released three hours after the DART mission spacecraft successfully hit the asteroid Dimorphos, 11 million kilometers from Earth.
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The images include before and after comparisons of the Didymos asteroid system, as well as photos of the glowing debris surrounding Dimorphos.
“We are really very proud,” said Elisabetta Dotto, head of the scientific team of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) at a press conference held in Italy on Tuesday (27/9). Space.
Dotto said these images were crucial in helping scientists understand Dimorphos’ structure and composition.
He said only photos could be released at this time. However, there will be more LICIACube images that the team will release in the coming days.
In the last image shared yesterday, Dimorphos is surrounded by clear, fuzzy debris.
“Dimorphos was completely covered by the dust and debris emissions produced by this collision,” said Dotto.
Before the collision actually occurred, scientists weren’t sure how the asteroid would respond to the collision.
NASA’s DART mission is known to crash into Dimorphos, or a smaller asteroid surrounding a larger asteroid called Didymos, to test a potential way to regulate the orbit of an Earth-threatening asteroid.
Now, astronomers are monitoring the Didymos system and preparing to measure the rate at which Dimorphos’s orbit is changing. This data will be needed by NASA to determine the success of the DART mission.
Additionally, the DART mission team also recruited three spacecraft and countless ground observers to witness the impact and aftermath of the collision.
(lom / ar)
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