Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2022

T his sequence of images was extracted from a video made by Des Makes Observatory. It shows the binary system before impact, immediately after im- pact, and when the field of debris is already moving toward outer space, where the cloud dissipates. [Des Makes Observatory, J. Berthier, F. Vachier, T. Santana-Ros, ESA NEOCC, D. Fohring, E. Petrescu, M. Micheli] T he DART approach, one minute before impact, after the spacecraft had achieved “precision lock”, im- plying that the autonomous navigation system was en- gaged. [NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL, image en- hancement by the Author] his video, sped up 10 times the actual speed, shows a series of images taken one second apart by the DART spacecraft as it approached Didymos and the smaller Dimor- phos before colliding with the latter. The last few images are shown in real speed. [NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL]

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