As the Dart spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos, astronomers on a small slice of our planet’s surface could actually watch it live with their telescopes.
On Monday, the ESA’s EStrack network of ground stations, Europe’s ‘eyes on the sky, were focused on the DART spacecraft and closely monitoring its every move as it closed in on the 160-meter-wide moving target in the world’s first test of asteroid deflection.
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 Centre (NEOCC).
The team of the Les Makes observatory, on the French island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean was one of the very first groups of observers to report success and a direct confirmation of DART’s impact.
The sequence of images they provided in real-time was impressive: the asteroid immediately started brightening upon impact, and within a few seconds it was already noticeably brighter. Within less than a minute a cloud of ejected material became visible, and we could follow it while it drifted Eastward and slowly dissipated.
The emotion of following the event live was the conclusion of weeks of discussions, meetings, accurate planning, and observational design by our team, together with the local observers and scientists at all the collaborating stations, according to the ESA.
\
\