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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA mission intended to crash a projectile on Dimorphos, the secondary component of the binary (65803) Didymos system, to study its orbit deflection. As a consequence of the impact, a dust…
Asteroid collisions are one of the main processes responsible for the evolution of bodies in the main belt. Using observations of the Dimorphos impact by the DART spacecraft, we estimate how asteroid collisions in the main belt may look in…
We used the times of occultations and eclipses between the components of the 65803 Didymos binary system observed in its lightcurves from 2003-2021 to estimate the orbital parameters of Dimorphos relative to Didymos. We employed a weighted…
The impact of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft with Dimorphos allows us to study asteroid collision physics, including momentum transfer, the ejecta properties, and the visibility of such events in the Solar System. We…
Ejecta from Dimorphos following the DART mission impact, significantly increased the brightness of the Didymos-Dimorphos system, allowing us to examine sub-surface material. We report daily near-IR spectroscopic observations of the Didymos…
Morphological mapping is a fundamental step in studying the processes that shaped an asteroid surface. Yet, it is challenging and often requires multiple independent assessments by trained experts. Here, we present fast methods to detect…
Hera represents the European Space Agency's inaugural planetary defense space mission and plays a pivotal role in the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment international collaboration with NASA DART mission that performed the first…
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully impacted the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system on 2022 September 26 UTC. We provide an update to its pre-impact mutual orbit and estimate the post-impact…
Some active asteroids have been proposed to be the result of impact events. Because active asteroids are generally discovered serendipitously only after their tail formation, the process of the impact ejecta evolving into a tail has never…
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the natural satellite of (65803) Didymos, on 2022 September 26, as a first successful test of kinetic impactor technology for deflecting a potentially hazardous…
On 26 September 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the satellite of binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. This demonstrated the efficacy of a kinetic impactor for planetary defense by…
We have observed the Didymos-Dimorphos binary system with the MUSE integral field unit spectrograph mounted at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) pre and post-DART impact, and captured the ensuing ejecta cone, debris cloud, and tails at…
We have monitored the Didymos-Dimorphos binary system in imaging polarimetric mode before and after the impact from the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. A previous spectropolarimetric study showed that the impact caused a…
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is a planetary defense-driven test of a kinetic impactor on Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos. DART will intercept Dimorphos at a relative speed of…
Asteroid Didymos, recently targeted by the NASA DART mission, is also planned to be visited by the ESA Hera mission. The main goal of the DART mission was to impact Dimorphos, the small satellite of Didymos, which was accomplished in…
Binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos is the target of the proposed NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), part of the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission concept. In this mission, the DART spacecraft is…
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully performed the first test of a kinetic impactor for asteroid deflection by impacting Dimorphos, the secondary of near-Earth binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and changing the…
The impact of the DART spacecraft into Dimorphos, moon of the asteroid Didymos, changed Dimorphos' orbit substantially, largely from the ejection of material. We present results from twelve Earth-based facilities involved in a world-wide…
Didymos and Dimorphos are primary and secondary, respectively, asteroids who compose a binary system that make up the set of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). They are targets of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first test…
In the first few months following the DART impact on Dimorphos, it appears that the orbital period dropped by ${\sim} 30$ s in addition to the immediate ${\sim}30 $ min drop. This effect has been attributed to ``binary hardening,'' whereby…