The DART mission by NASA successfully demonstrated an asteroid deflection technique by impacting asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022. The European Space Agency is now preparing to launch the Hera mission to further study the effects of the impact. Scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral on October 7 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Hera spacecraft is about the size of a small car and weighs around 1,081 kilograms. This mission aims to analyze the impact of DART on Dimorphos and its double asteroid system. Data from the DART mission, along with observations from ground-based telescopes and space telescopes like Hubble and James Webb, have confirmed the successful redirection of Dimorphos' trajectory. Hera's focus is on investigating the aftermath of the impact to provide valuable insights for the scientific community and space agencies.The objective is to achieve better outcomes and enhance models for successfully diverting asteroids away from potential collisions with Earth or space installations. Furthermore, the Hera mission aims to thoroughly investigate a binary asteroid system. This mission marks the first specialized endeavor to analyze asteroid pairings like Didymos and Dimorphos. With 15% of known asteroids existing as binaries, this exploration will provide valuable insights into the characteristics and actions of asteroids.
Image Credit: Instagram/@europeanspaceagency NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART mission, achieved a significant feat by demonstrating a method of asteroid deflection. This was accompli...