Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Asteroid-bound DART spacecraft snaps Jupiter and moon Europa

By

With just a few days to go before NASA deliberately crashes a spacecraft into an asteroid, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is taking a final opportunity to capture some data before its impact. Designed to test whether a spacecraft could be used to deflect an asteroid if we ever spotted a large one headed for Earth, DART has fairly minimal instruments on board — just enough for it to make its way to the asteroid and track it so it can impact.

However, every time there’s an instrument traveling through space there’s an opportunity to collect data. So NASA teams have been making the most of DART’s onboard camera, called the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, or DRACO. As the spacecraft’s only instrument, its main function is as part of the autonomous navigation system which will line up the spacecraft with the target asteroid, called Dimorphos. DRACO has been taking images along the way as part of the testing of the spacecraft ahead of its impact.

Recommended Videos

“Every time we do one of these tests, we tweak the displays, make them a little bit better and a little bit more responsive to what we will actually be looking for during the real terminal event,” said Peter Ericksen SMART Nav software engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in a statement.

A cropped composite of a DRACO image centered on Jupiter taken during one of SMART Nav’s tests. DART was approximately 16 million miles (26 million km) from Earth when the image was taken, with Jupiter approximately 435 million miles (700 million km) away from the spacecraft.
A cropped composite of a DRACO image centered on Jupiter taken during one of SMART Nav’s tests. DART was approximately 16 million miles (26 million km) from Earth when the image was taken, with Jupiter approximately 435 million miles (700 million km) away from the spacecraft. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

This DRACO image was taken for testing purposes as it shows Jupiter and several of its moon, including Europa. Taken just as Europa peeked out from behind Jupiter, this situation is analogous to the pair of asteroids that DART is heading toward just before impact. The data allows the teams to see how the autonomous navigation system should work once it arrives at its target, and to get a feel of what kind of data they could expect to see.

Related

“The Jupiter tests gave us the opportunity for DRACO to image something in our own solar system,” said Carolyn Ernst, DRACO instrument scientist at APL. “The images look fantastic, and we are excited for what DRACO will reveal about Didymos and Dimorphos in the hours and minutes leading up to impact!”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Asteroid impacted by spacecraft is reshaped like an M&M ‘with a bite taken out’
An illustration shows a spacecraft from NASA's DART mission approaching the asteroid it was intended to redirect.

In 2022, the world watched with fascination as NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of what kind of defense options might be available to humanity if an incoming asteroid ever threatened Earth. Observers could tell very quickly that the test, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART, was successful in changing the asteroid's orbit. But now astronomers have learned more, finding that the impact may have reshaped the asteroid significantly.

The asteroid impacted, called Dimorphos, is very small at around 500 feet across, and the DART spacecraft crashed into it at a tremendous speed of nearly 4 miles per second. Researchers have now used computer modeling to see the effects of this impact, given the limited amount of information we have on the composition and uneven surface of Dimorphos.

Read more
U.S. spacecraft lands on the moon for the first time in over 50 years
Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander heads to the moon.

The U.S. company Intuitive Machines made a historic landing on the moon today. Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander, launched earlier this month, touched down on the moon's surface at 6:23 p.m. ET, marking the U.S.'s first lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first landing on the moon by a commercial entity.

The Odysseus lander is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which provides contracts to companies for lunar services, and it carries a number of NASA scientific instruments. It has landed on the moon's south pole, which is an area of particular scientific interest as it hosts water ice and is the region where NASA plans to land astronauts under its Artemis program.

Read more
NASA’s Juno spacecraft to pass within 1,000 miles of volcanic moon Io
This image revealing the north polar region of the Jovian moon Io was taken on October 15 by NASA’s Juno. Three of the mountain peaks visible in the upper part of image, near the day-night dividing line, were observed here for the first time by the spacecraft’s JunoCam.

NASA's Juno spacecraft, currently in orbit around Jupiter, will soon be making a close flyby of one of the planet's most dramatic moons, Io. On Saturday, December 30, Juno will come within 1,000 miles of Io, making it the closest spacecraft to that moon in the last 20 years.

Io is an intriguing place because it shows signs of significant volcanic activity, making it the most geologically active body in the solar system. It hosts over 400 active volcanoes, which periodically erupt due to hot magma inside the moon created by friction caused by the gravitational pull between Jupiter and its other large moons.

Read more