The Italian Space Agency has released the first images of the aftermath of the spacecraft’s collision with the asteroid Demorphos.
These images were taken by the Small Asteroid Imaging Spacecraft (LICIACube), which reached Earth about 3 hours after the collision, which occurred about 7 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.
The images include a comparison before and after the impact, as well as images of the bright debris surrounding Demorphos, which resulted from the impact.
“We are really very proud,” Elisabetta Dotto, science team leader at the Astituto Nazionale dei, said during a press conference in Italian on Tuesday.
She explained that these images are necessary to help scientists understand the structure and structure of Dimorphos.
She added that these photos are only the first couple to be released, and promised to release more in the coming days.
In the final image shared today, Demorphos is surrounded by a bright, hazy remnant. “Demorphos is completely covered by this emission of dust and debris from the impact,” Dotto said.
This debris represents a direct impact of the collision, but the effect that NASA will seek to test later is the change that occurred in the orbit of the asteroid as a result of the collision, as NASA is testing the possibility of defending the planet when dangerous objects approach it, by directing a vehicle that collides with these objects to change its course away from Earth. .
The asteroid “Demorphos” chosen by NASA for the experiment does not constitute any danger to the planet, but the collision of the vehicle with it will give an indication of what can be done when there is a real danger to the planet.
The asteroid “Demorphos” revolves like a clock every 11 hours and 55 minutes around a larger asteroid near Earth called “Dedimos”. minutes.
The spacecraft “DART” took a period of 10 months to reach the asteroid, and its launch was at dawn on Tuesday at the moment of collision 22,000 kilometers per hour.
And the American Space Agency broadcast, through its YouTube channel, an experiment directing the spacecraft to collide with the asteroid, and at the moment of the collision, the broadcast stopped, but a smaller spacecraft nearby will monitor, and will send images to Earth in the following days, and telescopes on all seven continents, in addition to space telescopes such as “James” Webb also watched the collision and its aftermath will be monitored for weeks, with the aim of accurately measuring how the asteroid’s path has changed.