Italy’s space agency released the first images of the aftermath of NASA’s historic mission to ram an asteroid with a spacecraft.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test targeted an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth that didn’t pose an immediate threat but was intended to test the technology for a future, more urgent effort, according to Axios. The pictures of the aftermath were taken by the Italian-produced LICIACube miniature satellite, which was deployed by the DART satellite days before the fateful mission. The remarkable pictures were taken just minutes after the collision, showing pieces of the asteroid scattered across space.
NASA’S HISTORIC DART MISSION SEES SPACECRAFT SMASH INTO ASTEROID
The images released by LICIACube are expected to be followed by images from the James Webb Space Telescope in the coming days.
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More pictures will be taken in the coming weeks to fully survey the damage and gauge the mission’s success.
