The first photos of the asteroid spacecraft have been sent

The first photos of the DART space probe, launched into space by the US space agency NASA in late November to deliberately collide with an asteroid, have been released.  

Although Jupiter makes it unlikely that Earth will be hit by a large asteroid, scientists are constantly monitoring the movements of small planets and have been working for many years on a way to deflect a dangerous space rock if necessary. The newly announced DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) space programme aims to find out whether a device launched from Earth could redirect an asteroid that threatens to end the world.

The special spacecraft was launched on 24 November on board SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from space agency. Of course, the machine was also equipped with a camera, which was not idle for long, two weeks after its launch. sent by the first images, recently shared by Johns Hopkins University in the US.

The first image was taken astronomically very close to Earth, about 3.2 million kilometres away, and shows stars at the intersection of the constellations Perseus, Aries and Taurus.

A few days later, the DART space probe took another image of the Messier 38 cluster, which is about 4200 light-years from Earth, showing dozens of stars.

The DART spacecraft is tentatively scheduled to collide with the Dimorphos meteorite, about 160 metres in diameter, on 26 September. The test will seek to find out whether a high-speed impactor can change the trajectory of an asteroid, avoiding a collision with Earth.