The DART mission by NASA successfully demonstrated asteroid deflection by impacting asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos in 2022. Now, the European Space Agency's Hera mission is launching to study the impact and changes caused by DART on the double asteroid. Scheduled to lift off on October 7 from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Hera is set to reach its destination in October 2026, traveling several hundred million kilometers. The Hera spacecraft, similar in size to a small car and weighing around 1,081 kilograms, aims to provide further insights into the effects of DART's impact on the asteroid system. Previous observations from ground-based telescopes, as well as data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, have confirmed the successful deflection of Dimorphos' trajectory by DART. The impact also led to a reduction in Dimorphos' orbital period around Didymos. Hera's mission is crucial for understanding the aftermath of this impact and will contribute valuable information to the scientific community and space agencies.The aim is to generate outcomes and advance models for efficiently diverting asteroids away from their collision trajectories with Earth or space structures. Additionally, the Hera mission is anticipated to perform an in-depth investigation of a binary asteroid system. This mission is the first of its kind dedicated to studying asteroid pairs, such as the Didymos and Dimorphos duo. Given that 15% of known asteroids are binaries, this exploration will assist scientists in gaining a deeper comprehension of 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...