A full analysis of the collision induced dissociation of a diatomic molecular ion is presented for the first time. The experiment is essentially based on the simultaneous measurement of the momenta of the two fragments. This technique applied to the collision of Na 2 1 with a helium target reveals, at keV collision energies, the competition between two dissociation mechanisms: an impulsive mechanism when the target hits one Na 1 core in a close encounter and an electronic mechanism when dissociation occurs after excitation of repulsive or weakly bound states. [S0031-9007(96)00952-0] PACS numbers: 34.50.Pi, 34.50.LfCollision induced dissociation (CID) of diatomic molecules is an example of a three body interaction which is not yet fully understood. Back in the sixties, the study of CID of H 2 1 molecules was initially motivated by the need to produce fast H atoms for heating plasma of interest for thermonuclear fusion. Then, during the seventies, an intense activity developed when it was demonstrated that accurate measurements of momentum distributions of dissociation fragments produced in fast collisions were a powerful tool to access the spectroscopy of molecular ions with meV accuracy [1]. Termed "translational spectroscopy," this technique allows for such an accuracy, owing to the magnification introduced by the laboratory-to-center-of-mass (CM) transformation of the momentum distribution of the fragments. Our knowledge of this field is well summarized in the review of Los and Govers [2]. In the keV energy range and for the investigated systems, the collision time is much shorter than the dissociation time of the molecule, allowing approximations in terms of "two step" mechanisms. In the first step, the molecule is excited into an unstable state. In the second step, dissociation occurs far from the perturbing partner of the collision. As first proposed by Durup [3], two classes of mechanisms have been considered, depending on the first step of the collision.(i) A close encounter between one atomic core of the molecule and the target atom, the other atomic core remaining spectator, leads to a large stretching of the molecule resulting in vibrational excitation, increasing with the scattering angle [4]. Such a mechanism, hereafter referred to as the impulse mechanism (IM), has been identified by measuring the energy losses undergone by a molecular projectile as a function of the scattering angle [5]. In such a collision induced vibrational excitation, the molecule dissociates when the energy transfer is large enough. Although often invoked, this dissociation mechanism has never been directly observed. Notice that such a binary impulse mechanism has already been invoked as an initial step for reactive collision processes at moderate energy [6].(ii) In a more distant collision, the target may primarily interact with the electron cloud of the molecule which can be electronically excited into a dissociative state. In fact, in most of the investigated cases, this excitation results from an electron capture by the mol...