(ANSA) - ROME, SEPTEMBER 27 - NASA's Dart probe hit Dimorphos, the small asteroid with a diameter of 160 meters, losing its trajectory, in the first experiment of planetary defense, that is, designed to defend the Earth from threatening asteroids in the future.
Witness of the impact is the Italian minisatellite LiciaCube, financed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and built by the Argotec company.
As the probe approached its target, its camera sent more and more detailed images to Earth of the surface of the celestial body, 13 million kilometers away from Earth.
With each image the emotion increased in the NASA Control Center, up to the huge applause that greeted the impact.
At that moment the LiciaCube satellite, managed by the Italian Space Agency and built by the Argotec company, was less than a thousand kilometers from the asteroid which immediately after the collision entered the scene as a cosmic motor reporter to capture the point of impact.
It was "a spectacular impact!", Simone Pirrotta, head of the LiciaCube mission for ASI, who followed the mission from the Turin Control Center, told ANSAS.
"The SmartNav pointing technology of the Dart probe worked perfectly. We followed the end of the NASA mission with emotion, knowing that our little reporter was documenting a historical moment: the first time that mankind changed the orbital state of a celestial body" , he added referring to the LiciaCube satellite, in which the National Institute of Astrophysics, Politecnico di Milano, University of Bologna, Parthenope University of Naples and the 'Nello Carrara' Institute of Applied Physics of the National Research Council participated for the scientific part.
"In the 4 minutes before the impact, Liciacube started tracking the asteroid guided no longer by the pre-loaded trajectories on board, but by the Imaging System, the guiding system based on real-time images", added Pirrotta.
The first window of communication with the Earth is scheduled for 2:15: "in the first hour we will check the status of the satellite and the register of what happened".
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