DART's action-packed mission is a partnership involving instruments in space and on the ground.
But the work began even before DART launched in November 2021.
As the DART mission concept became a spacecraft, those observations continued. For DART, the most important result was precisely pinpointing how long it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos: 11 hours and 55 minutes. "Unfortunately, it's a point source, it's just a very fast moving dot moving across the background of stars," Thomas said."It might seem a little underwhelming, but to me, it's actually really a testament to how impressive our techniques have gotten, that we can take the information from this relatively small dot of light that's moving very quickly and pull so much information out of it.
Catching the moment of impact itself will be tricky, however."The impact will occur when Didymos is essentially over the Indian Ocean," Thomas said."So there's not as many ground-based facilities observing as one might expect."
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