Image Credit: Instagram/@europeanspaceagency

NASA’s DART mission successfully demonstrated a method for deflecting asteroids by impacting asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos. Two years later, the European Space Agency's Hera mission is launching on October 7, 2026, from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Hera spacecraft, about the size of a small car and weighing 1,081 kilograms, aims to study the effects of DART's impact on Dimorphos and Didymos. Ground-based telescopes confirmed DART's success in altering Dimorphos's trajectory and showed a decrease in its orbital period post-impact. Hera's main objective is to provide insight into the aftermath of the impact for the scientific community and space agencies.The aim is to produce outcomes and enhance models to successfully redirect asteroids away from potential collisions with Earth or space objects. Furthermore, the Hera mission is set to undertake a thorough investigation of a binary asteroid system, marking the inaugural specialized mission aimed at studying asteroid pairs like Didymos and Dimorphos. Approximately 15% of identified asteroids are known to be binaries, underscoring the significance of this exploration in advancing scientists' comprehension of asteroid characteristics and behavior.