{"id":133315,"date":"2021-12-30T14:23:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T22:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/with-its-single-eye-nasas-dart-returns-first-images-from-space"},"modified":"2021-12-30T14:23:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T22:23:40","slug":"with-its-single-eye-nasas-dart-returns-first-images-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/with-its-single-eye-nasas-dart-returns-first-images-from-space","title":{"rendered":"With its single \u2018eye,\u2019 NASA\u2019s DART returns first images from space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/with-its-single-eye-nasas-dart-returns-first-images-from-space.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just two weeks after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has opened its \u201ceye\u201d and returned its first images from space\u2014a major operational milestone for the spacecraft and DART team.<\/p>\n<p>After the violent vibrations of launch and the extreme temperature shift to minus 80 degrees C in space, scientists and engineers at the mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, held their breath in anticipation. Because components of the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/spacecraft\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">spacecraft<\/a>\u2019s telescopic instrument are sensitive to movements as small as 5 millionths of a meter, even a tiny shift of something in the instrument could be very serious.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Dec. 7, the spacecraft popped open the circular door covering the aperture of its DRACO telescopic camera and, to everyone\u2019s glee, streamed back the first image of its surrounding environment. Taken about 2 million miles (11 light seconds) from Earth\u2014very close, astronomically speaking \u2014the image shows about a dozen stars, crystal-clear and sharp against the black backdrop of space, near where the constellations Perseus, Aries and Taurus intersect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just two weeks after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has opened its \u201ceye\u201d and returned its first images from space\u2014a major operational milestone for the spacecraft and DART team. After the violent vibrations of launch and the extreme temperature shift to minus 80 degrees C [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}