LICIACube
LICIACube — a small Italian satellite built and operated by Argotec for the Italian Space Agency, and Italy's first mission into deep space. It rode to the asteroid Didymos aboard NASA's DART and was released on 11 September 2022. On 26 September it watched DART strike Didymos's moon Dimorphos, flying past 58 km from Dimorphos about 167 seconds after the impact and returning 426 images of the impact and the plume of debris it threw out. The Italian Space Agency has said only that the mission lasted into the autumn of 2022.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- ASI / Argotec
- Launched
- November 24, 2021
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Current speed
- 30.7 km/s
- Computed from the cached state vector
- Distance from the Sun
- 0.974 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 1.97 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Mercury
- 1.19 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
LICIACube, the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, was a 14 kg satellite designed, built and operated by the Turin company Argotec for the Italian Space Agency, with the science coordinated by Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics. It rode inside NASA's DART, launched on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg on 24 November 2021, and the Italian Space Agency calls it Italy's first mission into deep space. DART released it on 11 September 2022, fifteen days before its planned impact on Dimorphos, the small moon of the asteroid Didymos. On 26 September at 23:14 UTC DART struck, and LICIACube, following behind, photographed the impact and the plume of debris it threw out from 71 seconds before to 320 seconds after it. It passed 58 km from Dimorphos (57.7 km in JPL's reconstruction) about 167 seconds after the impact, and returned 426 images. The Italian Space Agency has said only that the mission lasted into the autumn of 2022; it is in orbit around the Sun.
- 2021LICIACube launches toward Didymos on a Falcon 9 rocketLaunch
Inside NASA's DART.
- 2022Released by DARTDeployment
Fifteen days before the impact.
About 167 seconds after the impact, returning 426 images.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image