The small asteroid Dimorphos wrapped in a cloud of debris, from which, like rays, trails of dust made luminous by the illumination of the Sun depart: this is what can be seen in one of the first spectacular images, of the 620 taken by the Italian mini-satellite

LiciaCube

, immediately after the impact of NASA's Dart probe

on

the

small

asteroid, which occurred during the night. 

The images taken by

LiciaCube

, a satellite managed and coordinated by the Italian Space Agency (

ASI

) and created by the

Argotec

company of Turin, were presented in the press conference organized at

Argotec

and are the very first to arrive on Earth.

"The Dart

mission

of NASA and our satellite

LiciaCube

was a great success and we thank

NASA

for having wanted us as a partner", commented the president of

ASI

,

Giorgio Saccoccia

.

This is "a golden moment for Italian space activities and the results can be seen, in terms of scientific results, of international dialogue, first of all with NASA and ESA".

During the press conference, the scientist

Elisabetta Dotto

, leader of the scientific team of the National Institute of Astrophysics (

Inaf

), underlines that it is "the first time that a binary system of asteroids has been observed on site, we will have many other images and we will conduct many analyzes. The work that awaits us now will be surprising and already promises to be a great success, this mission is a technological and scientific challenge and we thank all the partners ”.

A "huge success" is also the comment of

Thomas Zurbruchen

, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate of NASA, who spoke at the opening of the press conference: "We woke up this morning with enormous success, and enormous success was also of LiciaCube ", the Italian satellite that worked in NASA's Dart mission, the first planetary defense mission and which saw the Dart probe collide with the asteroid Dimorphos.