Last photo of asteroid Didymos before DART impact​


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(Image credit: ESO/Bagnulo et al.)
Monday, September 26, 2022: This may be the last picture of asteroid Didymos before its encounter with NASA's asteroid-smashing probe DART.

The dot of light in this image, captured by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile on the night of September 25/26, is in fact two asteroids combined — Didymos and its smaller moonlet Dimorphos which will be the ultimate target of the collision with DART.


 

 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbL07cZUEMU




 
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Technicians prepare to move NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft from a shipping container onto a work stand inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in this image from Oct. 4, 2021.

DART was launched on Nov. 23, 2021, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg. The spacecraft will intentionally smash into the moonlet Didymos on Sept. 26, 2022, to see if this method of asteroid deflection—known as the kinetic impactor technique—would be a viable way to protect our planet if an asteroid on a collision course with Earth were discovered in the future.

Image Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Aaron Taubm

Last Updated: Sep 26, 2022
Editor: Monika Luabeya
 
Really hoping we get some close up shots of Didymos post impact. Would love to see what sort of structure we're dealing with here.

Just seen the first images before the Didymos impact on the BBC News channel this morning, DART hit dead centre.
 
Might the cube get a closer look at the crater? I wonder if tidal pertubations might fill it in by the time Hera gets there...
 
Teamwork makes the dream work For the first time, @ESA_Webb and @HUBBLE_space have observed the same target at the same time. And it's not just any target... it's the aftermath of the #DARTMission collision with #asteroid Dimorphos!

View: https://twitter.com/esascience/status/1575478446515400704

 

We need a follow up probe to look at what the damage was that DART caused to Dimorphos. Let's see what becomes of the European mission, it will be interesting know how much of the surface was blown off the asteroid and also what happened to Dimorphos's orbit.
Already got you covered with ESA’s Hera mission, see video up thread.
 

We need a follow up probe to look at what the damage was that DART caused to Dimorphos. Let's see what becomes of the European mission, it will be interesting know how much of the surface was blown off the asteroid and also what happened to Dimorphos's orbit.
Already got you covered with ESA’s Hera mission, see video up thread.

Interesting Flyaway, I will be following Hera with interest.
 
i really wish there was a way we could have gotten LUCIACube close enough to get a small real-time video of DART slamming into Dimorphos. to see how all the pieces and particles reacted so we could fully understand how we got the formation we did. (which was absolutely FASCINATING!) and besides. who wouldn't want to see that? im glad that we were able to have the opportunity to successfully do this the first time. now i think this is a good opportunity to also test a nuclear version that could actually disband the asteroid from its orbit. or destroy it. it's a perfect testing ground. it's relatively close and it's a moving target. we could make this work. because if we can hit that? we can hit pretty much anything
 

 

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