The entire world watched as a small NASA spacecraft called DART exploded. Since it left Earth in November, this box, slightly larger than an oven and winged with solar panels, had been doomed.
The mission of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test was straightforward: collide with a large asteroid to see if the impact nudges the space rock ever so slightly. If this is the case, perhaps a future asteroid on a collision course with Earth can be avoided using a similar spacecraft suicide mechanism – a way to save humanity while also avenging the dinosaurs.
DART dutifully took images of its impending doom until the very end, on its way to the targeted asteroid Dimorphos. Then its final words were cut off.
LICIACube, which stands for Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, has released its first images.
LICIACube floated a safe distance away from the impact site, waiting for DART to simply die. Then, about three minutes after the crash, it flew over the scene and used its dual camera system to photograph the evidence. Streams of debris surround Dimorphos in these images, resulting from DART’s 14,000-mph plunge into the asteroid’s surface. LICIACube also captured images of the asteroid’s far side during a brief flyby, as well as a few more evocative images of the rock’s surroundings. The room erupted in applause when the satellite’s science team saw these portraits arrive.
