Image Credit: Instagram/@europeanspaceagency The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission made a significant achievement in showcasing a method of asteroid deflection. By altering the motion of an asteroid in space through kinetic impact, NASA successfully changed the trajectory of asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos. Now, two years later, the European Space Agency's Hera mission is preparing to launch for the purpose of mapping the same asteroid. Scheduled to lift off on October 7 from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Hera spacecraft, roughly the size of a small car and weighing about 1,081 kilograms, will travel several hundred million kilometers before reaching its destination in October 2026. The ESA's mission aims to study the impact of NASA's DART probe on Dimorphos and understand its implications on the double asteroid. With the help of various ground-based telescopes and the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes (JWST), data has shown that DART successfully altered the trajectory of Dimorphos, reducing its orbital period around Didymos. The Hera mission's key objective is to analyze the aftermath of the impact, providing valuable information for the scientific community and space agencies to apply to future research.The aim is to achieve results and enhance models for efficiently redirecting asteroids away from potential collisions with Earth or space installations. Furthermore, the Hera mission is slated to delve into a binary asteroid system in detail. This marks the initial dedicated mission to investigate asteroid pairs like Didymos and Dimorphos. As 15% of known asteroids are binaries, such exploration will provide valuable insights for scientists to deepen their understanding of asteroids' characteristics and actions.