Via Vetoio
Coppito 1
Abstract: On September 26th, 2022, the NASA DART spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos, the secondary of the binary system of Didymos, achieving the first Planetary Defense experiment. In the close vicinity of the system the ASI LICIACube cubesat, released from DART itself 15 days before the impact, acquired 400 images, uniquely witnessing the event, allowing to study in detail the surfaces of the two asteroids and the ejecta plume generated by the impact. The very first scientific results of this combined mission have been recently published, demonstrating the success in applying the kinetic impactor technique to deviate potentially hazardous asteroids, but the scientific team, that for LICIACube is led by INAF, is continuing to analyze the images to better constrain the details of the post-impact phase. In this talk the first results and the perspectives will be illustrated.