BREAKING: NASA's DART asteroid deflection mission has been declared as successful.
It has slowed the asteroid's orbit around its parent asteroid by 32 minutes: from 11 hr 55 min to 11 hr 23 min.
Pretty cool. A "hot off the press" image from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the debris trail from the impact, which is still visible.
And here's some very clean data from ground-based telescopes showing that the small "eclipses" of Dimorphos around Didymos have shifted.
Tom Statler, NASA's program scientist on DART posts this very pretty image from the Italian Space Agency's #LICIACube spacecraft, showing tendrils of debris after the impact.
*Whoops! Newtonian dynamics has foiled me. The asteroid was slowed down, BUT its orbit has actually sped up by 32 minutes.
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In its 100th update about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, @iaeaorg provides some important details about what's going on at the plant, and what's to come.
After offsite power was successfully restored, Unit 6 was shut off at 03:41 AM local time. With the other five units already in cold shut down, this means Zaporizhzhia NPP is no longer providing any power to the grid.
The report also confirmed that so-called "island mode", using one reactor to power the site, was unsustainable (see previous analogy below). It's less to do with the reactor physics and more to do with the strain it puts on turbines and pumps.
✅ The last reactor, Unit 6, has been operating in island mode, providing power to the rest of the site.
✅ The reactors and site will continue to need ⚡️ to keep the nuclear cores cool.
Based on this statement, it seems as though the site has a source of off site power for the moment, which probably motivated them to start the shutdown at unit 6 while they could.
If they lose that power they will have to switch to backup generators.
Without onsite ⚡️, or ⚡️ to the nearby town of Enerhodar, the plant will have to shut down its last operating unit.
When that happens, it will be relying on backup diesel generators to keep the reactors cool.
Running on diesel isn't necessarily a crisis situation. After hurricane Ida, for example, the Waterford-3 nuclear plant in Louisiana went on to diesel generators.
"It's a situation you can abide by for awhile," Steve Nesbit of @ANS_org told me.
@iaeaorg There was a fire due to shelling near the switchyard in August. it's an absolutely massive network of power transformers, lines and equipment that's out in the open and very vulnerable. This layout from @DanielPWWood gives a sense of how big it is.
@iaeaorg@DanielPWWood So the reactors at ZNPP have now been without ⚡️ from the grid for more than 48 hours, by my count.
But it's not on diesel generators, at least not yet. Instead, it's getting power from one of its own reactors.
(Probably Unit 6, but this is a pic of Unit 2 Credit: IAEA)
Holy moly, the plant was shelled while the @iaeaorg team was visiting. The team had to shelter in the ground floor of the admin building. They also witnessed lots of damage.
These photos are just wow... That artillery could shatter the windows of the walkway to reactor 6. That's a close strike. And this hole in the roof of the auxiliary building.
We now know, thanks to the IAEA that the building housed spent and fresh nuclear fuel.