On Monday, September 26, 2022, at 7:14 p.m. EDT (23:14 UTC), NASA's DART spacecraft successfully smashed into asteroid Dimorphos, the 160-meter (525-foot) moonlet orbiting around the larger Didymos asteroid. About 38 seconds later, the time it took for the light to arrive at Earth, people all over t
Observations of the DART asteroid impact by the Les Makes Observatory in Le Reunion show in a few seconds what took place in under half an hour. Credit: Les Makes observatory, J. Berthier, F. Vachier / T. Santana-Ros / ESA NEOCC, D. Föhring, E. Petrescu, M. Micheli
On a small slice of our planet’s surface, extending from southern and eastern Africa to the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Peninsula, astronomers could actually watch it live with their telescopes. Among those were a half dozen stations joined together for a dedicated observing campaign organized by ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and coordinated by the team of observers of the Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center .
“Something like this has never been done before, and we weren’t entirely sure what to expect. It was an emotional moment for us as the footage came in,” explains Marco Micheli, Astronomer at ESA’s NEOCC.“This was the conclusion of weeks of discussions, meetings, accurate planning, and observational design by our team, together with local observers and scientists at all our collaborating stations.
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