"Once we got a look at Dimorphos, we were very confident we were going to hit." (If Dimorphos had been a contact binary like comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko or New Horizons' target Arrokoth, a nearly direct hit on its centroid could've turned into a miss. Fortunately, it was round.)
I tried to call in to the press briefing to ask a question about image release plans, but, technical difficulties. There was one question on the briefing about LICIAcube plans... 1/n
Briefing quote(ish): "40 minutes before impact our Italian colleagues were shooting to get an extended [DSN] pass about 3 hours from now. It's a matter of can the DSN schedule the pass." Let me interpret what I *think* this means (caveat lector): 2/n
The Italian-built LICIAcube is run by the Italian space agency ASI. ASI has an agreement with NASA for irreplaceable time on NASA's Deep Space Network for its mission. They have scheduled comms passes that are necessary to maintain knowledge of spacecraft health. 3/n
Images take a LOT of data. The upcoming LICIAcube pass may not be long enough to transmit an image in addition to the spacecraft telemetry that informs us about its health. But LICIAcube (via ASI) is asking to see if the pass can be extended long enough for 1 pic to transmit 4/n
Eventually, all of LICIAcube's images will come down. But they aren't urgently needed for mission success or to understand health of spacecraft. They'll come down to Earth as and when time permits, a couple per day at most. We'll have to be patient. 5/n
Deep-space telecommunications is one of the biggest bottlenecks to science generally. The DSN is waaaaaay oversubscribed, but like freeway bridges, they're "just" infrastructure and it's always hard to get them the $ they need to upgrade/expand. 6/n
So in summary, we may get a LICIAcube image today; we might not. We'll get them eventually. The important thing is that #DARTmission succeeded, and LICIAcube is in good health, so the images probably exist. We hope! 7/7
LICIAcube was 165 seconds out from Dimorphos at the moment of impact, and closest approach was 55ish km away from the moon; it was totally safe from any impact-generated plume.
https://twitter.com/DarkSapiens/status/1574563244894670848
Oooh I hadn't thought of this. So in summary: There is DSN comms time that was allocated to #DARTmission in case something went wrong. Since it worked, the time could, if requested and approved, be reallocated to LICIAcube for image downlink.
https://twitter.com/doug_ellison/status/1574563338515726336
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