MODELLING OF THE EJECTA PLUME AFTER THE DART IMPACT

In the first real scale test of the kinetic impactor technique, on September 26, the NASA DART mission impacted the asteroid Dimorphos, the small satellite of the binary asteroid Didymos. The impact generated a large ejecta plume which was imaged by the Italian Space Agency probe LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids) which was carried as a piggy back payload by the NASA/APL DART spacecraft. Beside LICIACube many ground and space based observatories (e.g., HST, JWST) carried out extensive observation campaigns to characterize the event . The LICIACube images revealed complex structures with the plume including filaments, clumps and nodules possibly related to the presence of large boulders and to other superficial features in the impact area. The ground and space telescopes images also showed the formation of a long tail which, for a limited time also had a double structure.