Neorockers and Dart….Focus on LICIACUBE

What have Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica INAF and Italian Space Agency ASI being doing for DART?

Many things, but let’s focus on LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids).

LICIACube is a space mission of ASI, and part of the NASA DART. LICIACube was hosted as secondary spacecraft during all DART’s interplanetary cruise, being then released by its dispenser before the impact. It then continues its path through the asteroidal system, using an autonomous target tracking system in order to witness the DART impact on Dimorphos and acquire images of the target in the post-impact scenario.

LICIACube, known also as DARTs own “mini-photographer”, was successfully released on the night betwee 11th and 12th September 2022, exactly 15 days before DART is scheduled to impact the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos.

LICIACube, equipped with two different cameras, the narrow-field, panchromatic LEIA and the wide-field RGB LUKE, will collect unique images of the asteroid surface as well as of debris ejected from the newly formed crater. It will provide valuable information, useful for computer models of satellite-asteroid impacts and provide a spectacular testament of the mission’s success.

Many Italian Neorockers have been involved in this amazing adventure, with (to name but a few!) our coordinator Elisabetta Dotto (INAF) being the LICIACube Science Team Lead and Angelo Zinzi (Space Science Data Centre, ASI) being part of the DART Investigation Team as LICIACube SOC Lead and involved in process and distribution of the images acquired by LICIACube. Simone Ieva from INAF is involved in the DART & LICIACube mission as one of the leaders of the Characterizational effort among the Observation WG. This WG is observing the Didymos system with ground-based telescopes before and after DART impact, in order to monitor any changes in the system’s physical characteristics.