Image Credit: Instagram/@europeanspaceagency
NASA’s DART mission made a significant achievement in demonstrating a technique for redirecting asteroids. By utilizing kinetic impact to alter the motion of an asteroid, the mission successfully changed the trajectory of asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022. Two years later, the European Space Agency's Hera mission is preparing to launch for the purpose of mapping the same asteroid.
Scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral on October 7 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Hera will embark on a journey spanning several hundred million kilometers before reaching its destination in October 2026. Weighing approximately 1,081 kilograms and about the size of a small car, the Hera spacecraft will aim to study the impact of NASA's DART probe on Dimorphos and assess its effects on the double asteroid.
By leveraging data from an Italian minisatellite (CubeSat), images captured by DART prior to the impact, and observations from telescopes like Hubble and James Webb, scientists have already gained insights into the surface properties of the asteroid. Collaborative efforts among ground-based telescopes globally have confirmed the successful deflection of Dimorphos' trajectory by DART, alongside a decrease in the moonlet's orbital period after the impact.
Researchers have also noted that the impact resulted in a trail spanning thousands of kilometers, which could potentially intersect with Earth's atmosphere in the future. Hera's main objective is to investigate the aftermath of the impact, providing valuable information for the scientific community and space agencies to better understand and apply asteroid deflection techniques in the future.The goal is to enhance models that can efficiently redirect asteroids away from Earth or space structures at risk of collision. The Hera mission is set to explore a binary asteroid system in detail, like the Didymos and Dimorphos pair, marking the first mission dedicated to studying such formations. Given that 15% of known asteroids are binaries, this initiative will contribute significantly to scientists' knowledge of asteroid characteristics and behaviors.
