Millions of kilometers from Earth, the LICIAcube probe of the Italian Space Agency has begun the main part of its mission.
He had been traveling together with NASA's DART probe for nearly 10 months.
At 1.14 minutes Italian time she successfully separated and is preparing to document an unprecedented event.
In the night between 26 and 27 September DART will crash into an asteroid and LICIAcube will have the task of taking pictures of what will happen and sending them to Earth.
A sort of space photojournalist.
Why hit an asteroid?
To understand if it is possible to defend the Earth by deflecting a space rock in case of danger.
In this case the target is harmless, a binary asteroid called Didymos-Dimorphos that does not threaten our planet at all.
By evaluating the effect of the impact, however, it will be possible to evaluate whether this technique - impacting an asteroid to deflect it from its orbit - can work.
The project is very reminiscent of the plot of a science fiction film and instead is absolutely real.
The main center of activity at the moment is Turin.
In the headquarters of Argotec, the Italian company that built the probe, there is the control room that acts in connection with that of NASA in the United States.
From there the probe is managed, which in the next few days will continue its flight a short distance from the DART probe.
A couple more weeks and then the crash.
The study of the effects on the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid will also be carried out with the HERA probe of the European Space Agency which will be launched in a few years.
Meanwhile, LICIAcube has officially become the Italian object that has reached the furthest into space.
Argotec
Argotec, control room