DART mission.

[DaveL59]

well, bullseye, was hoping they'd switch to a feed from the wee cubesat that's following it but perhaps its too far at the moment?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Hurray for screen recorder. I can watch the last 10 mins over and over.

[Dark Raven]

This was spectacular! Boulders instead of craters, who would have thought... 🤔

Kudos to all involved.

[Gfamily]

8 minutes ago, Dark Raven said:

This was spectacular! Boulders instead of craters, who would have thought... 🤔

Kudos to all involved.

It's very similar to other inner solar system asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu. 

JWST has just made an observation of the Didymos asteroid,  i wonder what they'll see...

Edited September 27, 2022 by Gfamily

[markse68]

Strangely entertaining viewing- and not quite what they were expecting I think. They had stated earlier that there wouldn’t be much debris based i suppose on it being a solid rock instead of a giant ferrero rocher. 

 

[Paul M]

50 minutes ago, markse68 said:

Strangely entertaining viewing- and not quite what they were expecting I think. They had stated earlier that there wouldn’t be much debris based i suppose on it being a solid rock instead of a giant ferrero rocher. 

 

That's just amazing!

 

[Pete Presland]

Very impressive, thanks for sharing

[LukeSkywatcher]

It doesn't look like it nudged it out of its original trajectory. 

Spectacular amount of debris thrown off.

Edited September 27, 2022 by LukeSkywatcher

[maw lod qan]

Now, what's the chance that I'm on break,  eating a breakfast burrito, reading this post, and they show the impact on television!!??

Was incredible images.

[DaveS]

Which raises the question of how much of the KE of DART was transferred to Dimorphos, and how much to the debris cloud?

[DaveL59]

I guess we'll see a bit more once the follower has sent its images and data back but it'll be a while before they release much in the way of data on the effect and how that compares to expectations. 

[Paul M]

I wonder if any amatuers were imaging Didymos at the time of impact?

I'd already researched it in the hope it would be well placed for the mid northern latitudes but it actually just skimmed the souther horizon around impact time. Didn't really rise.

So an observer south of, say, 40 deg n lat had a reasonable chance of catching it.

[tomato]

We were clouded out at the Autumn Astrocamp last night and @Tomatobrofound a live feed of the impact from a terrestrial telescope in South Africa but… you’ve guessed it, they were clouded out too. 
 

Mankind seems to have an inherent desire to stage large scale destructive tests, early Hollywood crashed two steam locomotives head on, the British crashed a diesel train into a rail car designed to carry nuclear waste, and I’ve seen numerous videos of staged plane crashes, and what about all those atomic bomb tests in the 50’s? We just like smashing and blowing things up.

It does look like the target was a loose agglomeration of rubble so it might not have nudged the orbit by as much as they expected?

[Laurieast]

Google  "dart mission" and see what happens to your screen 😉

[LukeSkywatcher]

1 hour ago, Laurieast said:

Google  "dart mission" and see what happens to your screen 😉

I wonder did it cost Google $300,000,000 to create that.

[Zermelo]

So the little cubesat LICIACube has just checked in with this:

(Didymos lower and Dimorphos top, just after impact)

(Image credit: NASA/ASI)

https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-crash-first-photos-liciacube

[LukeSkywatcher]

What totally took me by surprise was the composition of the asteroid.

I had always thought of asteroids as a single solid body, with impact craters etc.

The images yesterday, proved me so wrong.

[Mandy D]

On 26/09/2022 at 23:03, DaveL59 said:

didn't have to calculate that, tho it was a VW Beetle vs Citroen DS head on. Front of the DS just a little crumpled, Beetle on the other hand, not a lot left of the front end. Any 2CV fans should also note - do not pull out in front of a truck if you want to see tomorrow...

Citroen always had a policy of engineering safer, more aerodynamic cars and I believe the DS was the first vehicle designed such that the engine and transmission would slide downwards and under the passenger compartment in the event of a front end collision. From a little web research, it is also clear that the 2CV was far from the worst car in safety terms. It featured the classic Citroen single spoke steering wheel which is designed to deform in the event of impact (acting like an airbag, only safer), the engine and transmission were designed to slide under the passenger compartment as per the DS. The bonnet was designed to slide up and over the passenger compartment and there was a large crumple zone in front of the engine. Also noteworthy is the fact that the 2CV had inboard disc brakes!

You note that there was not a lot left of the front end of the Beetle, but of far greater importance is the final integrity of the passenger compartment. If that was still intact and undamaged, then the crumple zone has done it's job.

[DaveL59]

2 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Citroen always had a policy of engineering safer, more aerodynamic cars and I believe the DS was the first vehicle designed such that the engine and transmission would slide downwards and under the passenger compartment in the event of a front end collision. From a little web research, it is also clear that the 2CV was far from the worst car in safety terms. It featured the classic Citroen single spoke steering wheel which is designed to deform in the event of impact (acting like an airbag, only safer), the engine and transmission were designed to slide under the passenger compartment as per the DS. The bonnet was designed to slide up and over the passenger compartment and there was a large crumple zone in front of the engine. Also noteworthy is the fact that the 2CV had inboard disc brakes!

You note that there was not a lot left of the front end of the Beetle, but of far greater importance is the final integrity of the passenger compartment. If that was still intact and undamaged, then the crumple zone has done it's job.

The DS chassis was also effectively 2 box girders running the length of the car 😉

Yep the folks in both cars survived ok, only the DS was still driveable after tho.

As for the 2CV, unfortunately when T-bones it folds, sadly that night only the lorry driver got to see the next day or even the moments after impact. Don't get me wrong tho, the 2CV was brilliantly engineered for its purpose all those decades ago, not may cars could do what it was designed to do.

[Mandy D]

4 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

The DS chassis was also effectively 2 box girders running the length of the car 😉

Yep the folks in both cars survived ok, only the DS was still driveable after tho.

As for the 2CV, unfortunately when T-bones it folds, sadly that night only the lorry driver got to see the next day or even the moments after impact. Don't get me wrong tho, the 2CV was brilliantly engineered for its purpose all those decades ago, not may cars could do what it was designed to do.

You have to love Citroen's attention to safety and detail and the DS was a truly innovative car, decades ahead of it's time. Did you ever see the Michelin tyre testing DS?

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/citroen-centipede-10-wheeled-tyre-testing-monstrosity/

The 2CV was built to a budget and could never compete with the amazing safety levels exemplified by other Citroens. Very sad that lives were lost, though, as always.

[DaveL59]

8 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

You have to love Citroen's attention to safety and detail and the DS was a truly innovative car, decades ahead of it's time. Did you ever see the Michelin tyre testing DS?

https://www.carthrottle.com/post/citroen-centipede-10-wheeled-tyre-testing-monstrosity/

The 2CV was built to a budget and could never compete with the amazing safety levels exemplified by other Citroens. Very sad that lives were lost, though, as always.

I've driven a BX GTi on 3 good tyres after collecting a bunch of nails in both front and rear on the drivers side. Only 1 spare needed to get me to the tyre bay, they were shocked that I was able to drive it in to them 🙂 I went on to run XM's, 3 over 20 ish years, the active suspension on them was great tho you could end up driving on a tyre low on pressure or have one go flat and not know it. I do miss that suspension system, so easy to road-side swap a tyre in mere minutes. The ability to raise the ride height was handy in deep snow too.

 

[Mandy D]

3 hours ago, DaveL59 said:

I've driven a BX GTi on 3 good tyres after collecting a bunch of nails in both front and rear on the drivers side. Only 1 spare needed to get me to the tyre bay, they were shocked that I was able to drive it in to them 🙂 I went on to run XM's, 3 over 20 ish years, the active suspension on them was great tho you could end up driving on a tyre low on pressure or have one go flat and not know it. I do miss that suspension system, so easy to road-side swap a tyre in mere minutes. The ability to raise the ride height was handy in deep snow too.

 

It was too advanced for mere humans! I had a CX estate back in the 1980s.

[DaveL59]

4 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

It was too advanced for mere humans! I had a CX estate back in the 1980s.

ahh always wanted a CX GTi, sadly will never own one these days. I ran my last XM v6 until 2009 and gave it away when the clutch broke (literally, a spring in the pressure plate on a fairly recent clutch) and went back to Alfa's.

[Mandy D]

1 minute ago, DaveL59 said:

ahh always wanted a CX GTi, sadly will never own one these days. I ran my last XM v6 until 2009 and gave it away when the clutch broke (literally, a spring in the pressure plate on a fairly recent clutch) and went back to Alfa's.

I was looking at what it would cost to get a CX estate today and it looks like around £10k and all the attendant problems of owning a car that is 30 years old! It was how I discovered the CX Loadrunner. Google it for more info.

With Peugeot ownership, the true Citroen is now sadly dead!

[Gfamily]

Back on topic, 

Here's a thread by a Planetary Scientist on what the visible appearance of the ejected material tells us...