DART won't survive its asteroid deflection mission, but the newly deployed LICIACube, a small probe,
NASA test for double redirection of asteroids(DART) is the space agency's first demonstration of a defense strategy against Earth-threatening asteroids. The spacecraft is set to crash into Dimorphos, the youngest asteroid in the Didymos binary system, on September 26 at 7:14 pm ET. Dimorphos poses no threat to Earth, but the experiment, if it works, will push the little moon a bit off its current path. In the future, a similar strategy could be used to deflect a truly threatening asteroid.
Onboard camera called DRACO (DidymosReconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation) will provide a first-person view of the collision. In addition, LICIACube will use two onboard cameras to document the impact and its aftermath.
On September 12, controllers gave the order to DARTrelease the 14kg LICIACube it has carried since launch on November 24, 2021. The signal confirming the probe's deployment arrived an hour later, to the delight of Simone Pirrotta, director of the LICIACube project for the Italian Space Agency.
“We are very excited about this:this is the first time an Italian team has launched a national spacecraft into deep space, he said in a statement. “The entire team is fully involved in the activity, monitoring the status of the satellite and preparing the phase of rendezvous with the asteroid.”
LICIACube, short for Light Italian CubeSatfor visualization of asteroids, was designed and built by the Italian aerospace company Argotec with the participation of the National Institute of Astrophysics and the universities of Bologna and Milan. The small probe, built from a 6-unit cubesat bus, is equipped with two optical cameras called LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) and LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid). Together, LUKE and LEIA will collect data to confirm the success of the DART mission and explore future models for similar tests conducted with kinetic impactors.
Currently, Pirrotta and his colleagues are calibrating LICIACube, acquiring dynamic images of distant celestial bodies.The tiny probe will receive a series of maneuvering commands shortly before DART's fatal collision with the 160-meter-wide asteroid Dimorphos.A NASA spacecraft flying at speeds in excess of 24,000 km/h willdestroyed by a blow. LICIACube will fly past the asteroid about three minutes after the encounter to confirm the impact, document the spread of the resulting dust plume, attempt to take a picture of the newly formed crater, and document the far side of Dimorphos, which DART will never see.
“We look forward to receiving the first full images andprocess them within a few days of the DART strike,” Pirrotta said. “Then we will use them to confirm the impact on the subject and add relevant information about the generated displacement, the true value of our photos.”
While studying the debris column and impact crater, scientistshope to better understand the structure and material of the asteroid's surface. Observations of the unaffected hemisphere of Dimorphos will improve estimates of the size and volume of the small moon.
NASA and ESA plan to document impactfrom afar. DART, if successful, would change the speed of Dimorphos in its 780-meter-wide orbit around Didymos "by a fraction of one percent, but it would change the little moon's orbital period by a few minutes - long enough to be observed and measured with telescopes on Earth," it says. NASA. Didymos is about 1.2 km from its larger companion.
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