LICIACube, the microsatellite built entirely in Argotec’s facilities in Turin on behalf of and in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), will be delivered and shipped in the coming weeks to the integration site in the United States in preparation for the launch, scheduled for the end year, of the first planetary defense mission from future potential asteroid threats.
The Italian microsatellite will in fact be among the protagonists of NASA’s DART mission, which aims to verify the possibility of modifying the orbit of the smallest asteroid of the double Didymos system through the impact of the American probe, at a speed of about 21,000 km. / h, about 11 million kilometers from Earth.
LICIACube, after a journey of about 11 months aboard DART, will separate from the NASA probe a few days before the impact to acquire high resolution images of the crater and the debris generated by the collision, to allow a complete assessment of the impact effects. . All the data produced in this phase of the mission will be essential to verify the effectiveness of the ability to change the orbit of the asteroids through this technique. In addition, the Italian and American scientific teams will use the data acquired by DART and LICIACube for investigations on the nature and composition of the asteroid