It’s been a month because the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched on its option to the binary asteroid system of Didymos and Dimorphos. DART captured its first photos three weeks in the past, an necessary operational milestone because the spacecraft hurtles towards a collision with Dimorphos.

DART’s predetermined destiny is to check a longstanding query of NASA’s: whether or not humankind can deflect an asteroid to cease it from hitting Earth. Neither Didymos nor the smaller Dimorphos threaten humanity, however they move comparatively near Earth, making them a great testing floor. Better to see if we are able to change an asteroid’s path earlier than we want to vary an asteroid’s path.

Famously, it was an asteroid’s impression with Earth that doomed the dinosaurs to extinction. NASA tracks many objects in house that come near Earth; they’re referred to as Near Earth Objects (NEOs). None are presently on a collision course, and once you see headlines warning of such shut calls, don’t fear: “close” in cosmic phrases is normally not shut in any respect. DART will collide with Dimorphos about 6.8 million miles from Earth in September 2022, if all goes in response to plan.

The picture above was taken when DART was about 2 million miles from Earth, utilizing the spacecraft’s DRACO telescopic digital camera. It many seem like solely grainy blackness, however it captures a couple of dozen stars, in response to a Johns Hopkins University press release. The imaged space is close to the place the constellations of Aries and Taurus intersect.

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DRACO is the only instrument in DART’s payload, although DART can also be carrying a small satellite tv for pc that it’s going to launch 10 days earlier than its arrival on the Didymos system. The digital camera took one other picture three days after the primary, of Messier 38, a star cluster about 4,200 light-years from Earth.

As DART continues its trek towards its ultimate vacation spot, DRACO will take photos alongside the best way to assist the DART workforce higher perceive any optical imperfections and calibrate brightness. That’s all helpful data forward of the final set of photographs, which might be captured in about 9 months.

Whether or not DART’s impression really adjustments the Dimorphos’s orbital trajectory, the collision would exhibit the flexibility for a spacecraft to autonomously navigate to and kinetically impression with a goal asteroid. Hopefully, we received’t want a real-deal mission like this any time quickly.

More: 9 Things to Know About NASA’s Armageddon Mission to Destroy an Asteroid