New asteroid strike images show impact 'a lot bigger than expected'

When I was watching the show I was wondering why they did not put a second probe right behind the first to observe the impact.<p>And when I went looking for more information about DART it turns out they did. the LICIACube. very cool.<p>So now the question is why was this not mentioned in the nasa show(perhaps I missed it) and why have I not heard anything about LICIACube from anywhere else(perhaps I missed this as well).<p>did LICIACube fail and every one is being quiet about it?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Test" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te...</a>

Asteroids are apparently a lot softer and fluffier than we thought. More like gravel and sand clumped together rather than being giant boulders.

&gt; Astronomers rejoiced as NASA&#x27;s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor slammed into its pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped target…<p>Good thing it wasn’t torus-sized or they might have missed!

Unfortunately this technology is likely to be weaponized at some point in the future as radiation-free multi-megaton munition. The project name does tell us that the goal is to redirection not destruction of the asteroid.

So it &quot;looks good&quot; but that&#x27;s all we get for now. A dust plume.<p>What they can&#x27;t say yet, is if the asteroid&#x27;s trajectory was effected, at all.

This page shows like 15 copies of the same mildly NSFW ad. Surprised this is a thing on Spacedaily.

This is a super cool mission involving collaboration with lots of other space missions to do something of practical and theoretical interest. Bravo!

I&#x27;m not a scientist, etc., but isn&#x27;t this potentially slightly bad news?<p>The more stuff getting knocked free, the less momentum gets imparted to the asteroid itself, so the less its course is changed.

&gt; Astronomers rejoiced as NASA&#x27;s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor slammed into its pyramid-sized, rugby ball-shaped target <i>11</i> million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Earth on Monday night.<p>&gt; Hubble images from <i>22</i> minutes, five hours and eight hours after impact show the expanding spray of matter from where DART hit.<p>&gt; The Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, had expected to survey a crater around 10 metres (<i>33</i> feet) in diameter.

I bet they were all disappointed because if there were no significant effect the next logical step is to allow the team try again with nukes.

The variability of composition of asteroids, from rubble piles to solid masses, makes me think that future asteroid diversion missions will look not so much like a big gun fired at the last minute, and more like a decades-long programme of search, analysis, and engineering tailored to each target.

Questions: are all asteroids relatively the same in composition, density, etc.?

Stop shooting sh!t at asteroids that are not heading for earth, please. You don&#x27;t know upfront what&#x27;s going to happen. What if the m0f0 splitted into two parts and one of the big parts was heading for earth now? Then what? Gonna play Armageddon, just as in the movies!?<p>There are more people on earth than only Americans, okay.<p>P.S. All jokes aside, all NASA people are probably very smart and sh!t, but please also think about all other people on earth. If you fvck up, you fvck up for everybody. Noblesse oblige. Space is pretty much unknown territory, be careful.