![]() That full, detailed process will take perhaps two months, Adams said. That orbit used to take 11 hours and 55 minutes, but scientists estimate that tonight's impact should cut that by at least 73 seconds, and perhaps more like 10 minutes. Meanwhile, scientists will also use ground-based observatories to clock the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos. Over the coming days, a small satellite called Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging Asteroids ( LICIACube) that DART deployed earlier this month will send to Earth a host of images captured just three minutes after the impact. Our job has just started, but it really looks just amazing."Īlthough the DART spacecraft itself is in no shape to report home, scientists do have some more data to look forward to. "We'll spend the next months and years doing analysis, of course. "These guys, their job is done, but ours is just beginning," Carolyn Ernst, instrument scientist for DART's DRACO camera and a planetary scientist at JHUAPL, said during the news conference. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL)įor the spacecraft team, today marks the beginning of the end, but for scientists involved in the mission, there's a lot more to do. "To see it so beautifully concluded today was just an incredible feeling."Ī series of images captured by the DART spacecraft as it sped to impact the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. ![]() ![]() "It is absolutely wonderful to do something this amazing, and we are so excited to be done," Adams said. DART marks the first step in moving beyond simply watching asteroids and considering actively intervening in their orbits. Right now, NASA doesn't know of any large asteroids that might hit Earth within the coming decades, but scientists are constantly scanning the skies to identify and track space rocks. Definitely I will." Planetary defense is dedicated to spotting asteroids that could potentially hit Earth and, if necessary, attempting to adjust the space rock's orbit enough to avoid catastrophe. "Yeah, I think Earthlings should sleep better. "As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success," Adams said. "We prepared these 21 contingencies and then we did none of them."ĭART's final measure of success will come in the next weeks and months, as scientists evaluate just how much the impact changed the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. "It was actually kind of disappointing," Adams said. "This mission was straight down the middle of what our expectations were, and there were no adjustments needed," Mark Jensenius, DART Smart Nav guidance engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), which operates the DART mission for NASA, said during the news conference. The team members also confirmed that DART operators didn't have to intervene at all during the final four hours of DART's approach.
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