Didymos and Dimorphos
The gravitationally bonded pair are separated by just 3,960 feet (1,200 meters). Didymos, measuring 2,650 feet wide (780 meters), was discovered in 1996 and its moonlet Dimorphos, measuring 520 feet wide (160 meters), was spotted seven years later. We really had no clue what these tiny objects looked like given the vast distances involved, but DART’s high-res DRACO instrument revealed the pair in exquisite detail.
The image above was taken 2.5 minutes prior to impact and at a distance of 570 miles (920 kilometers) to the target asteroid. With DRACO capturing one image per second, and with DART moving at 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 km/hr), this is the last image showing the two objects in a single frame.
