Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics LabĮarth-based observers will also look for the brightening due to an impact plume, but the key result from the mission - detecting a change in Dimorphos’ orbital period - will take days to weeks to achieve. A global observing campaign will follow the asteroid impact. Both of the great observatories will image the Didymos system beginning about 15 minutes after the impact. They will be searching for the sparking plume of dust that may rise off the surface of Dimorphos in response to the crash. Other in-space observers include the Lucy spacecraft, currently cruising toward its Jupiter Trojan asteroid mission, as well as the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. Meanwhile, observers throughout space and across Earth will watch the immediate and long-term effects of the crash. LICIAcube’s images will be crucial for science but do not have the priority of DRACO’s real-time images, so they will trickle slowly down to Earth at the rate of a couple per day over the subsequent months. It will pass about 55 kilometers (34 miles) away from the moon 165 seconds after the predicted impact. LICIAcube will use two cameras (the high-resolution, monochrome LEIA and wider-angle, color LUKE) to shoot photos of Dimorphos throughout the approach, impact, and afterward. On September 11th, an Italian-built minisatellite, LICIAcube (pronounced “lee-chee-ah kyoob”), separated from DART to establish a viewpoint on the carnage. Once the DART spacecraft has smashed itself to bits, the DRACO camera feed will end, of course. From left to right are Ganymede, Jupiter, Europa, Io and Callisto. This is a cropped composite from DART's Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) image, which centered on Jupiter during tests of the spacecraft's autonomous navigation system. The mission recently tested this autonomous target selection capability by watching Europa emerge from behind Jupiter. On its approach DART will initially target the binary system, then differentiate the larger and smaller members of the binary pair, and finally steer the spacecraft to strike the smaller Dimorphos. DART will stream photos from its DRACO camera down to Earth in real time, about one per second space fans can watch those photos appear live on NASA’s uncommentated media feed beginning a little less than two hours before impact.įed into an onboard computer with software descended from anti-missile technology, those images will help DART autonomously guide itself to its crash. NASA will host a live stream and press briefing during the three hours surrounding the impact. If the crash changes the velocity of Dimorphos’ orbit by a detectable amount, the mission will validate the notion that we can use a kinetic impactor to nudge a hazardous asteroid’s path - and keep Earth out of harm’s way. The first such test happens on Monday, September 26th at 23:14 UTC (19:14 EDT/16:14 PDT, Earth received time), when NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) smashes nearly head-on into Dimorphos, the satellite of asteroid 65803 Didymos. This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. There are lots of ideas for how to achieve such a change, but we’ve never tested any of them in space. ![]() With enough warning, a very small change in an asteroid’s orbital velocity could turn a certain future impact into a certain miss. What will we do if we find a previously undiscovered world on a path toward destruction? ![]() However, the fossil record demonstrates that once in a while, collisions aren’t so benign large asteroid impacts have dug craters, spawned tsunamis, caused climate changes, and wiped out life. The ones we do see typically produce a pretty light show, rarely accompanied by noise and meteorites. As Earth barrels along its orbit around the Sun, it is peppered by impacts from near-Earth objects. Space is mostly empty, but not completely so. Asteroids have caused multiple mass extinctions. Read on to see the original article detailing what we'll learn from this impact. ![]() While DART's onboard camera stopped working upon impact (hence the red screen), ground- and space-based telescopes watched for the after-effects. EDT on September 26th, the DART mission smashed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos - on schedule and right on target. We couldn't have hoped for better: At 7:14 p.m.
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