The Dart spacecraft has altered the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos
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NASA, the American space agency, is “ready to defend the Earth from anything that can come from the Universe.” This was stated by Bill Nelson, CEO of the Agency in a press conference which was also attended by the president of the Italian Space Agency Giorgio Saccoccia.
In fact, the confirmation from the observations of the last 10 days of dozens of telescopes on the ground has arrived, that the blow inflicted by the Dart probe of Nasa to the small asteroid Dimorphos, at the speed of 24 thousand kilometers per hour and 11 million kilometers from Earth, has had the desired effect: it altered the orbit of the small celestial body.
The impact with Dimorphos
Dimorphos, 180 meters in diameter, in fact revolves around its older brother, Didymos, 800 meters, but now, after the impact with the probe on September 26, it takes 32 minutes less than it did before to go around. Even half would have been enough for scientists, but the result is even more striking. Everything was documented by the camera of the Dart satellite, up to the moment of impact, but above all by the Italian mini satellite Liciacube, financed by Asi and built by Argotec of Turin, which detached itself from the mother probe before the impact and has wonderfully recorded all the phases, even immediately following.
Great satisfaction also from Italy, therefore, also because sending a mini satellite to deep space and making it do those maneuvers until now had only been successful in NASA, with two mini-satellites for Mars.
The prodigy of Liciacube
“Liciacube is a concentrate of high-level technology and navigates autonomously, making decisions and acting accordingly with trim corrections, thanks to the artificial intelligence software we have equipped it with,” says David Avino, founder and CEO of Argotec. It was necessary to equip him with this ability if you think that the last contact with the Liciacube Earth had it 12 hours before the impact, for one last small course correction ordered by the control room, then he had to do everything himself: keep the target in the center of its detection optics, take the 627 images and even turn continuously to be able to take into account the angle of view, as it reached the target and passed it, like a photographer in a car who has to continuously shoot images of a truck reaching it and then passing it.
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