Successful start of DART’s follow-up mission in the field of planetary asteroid defense: the ESA probe “Hera” will be on board a Falcon 9 rocket from the US spaceport Cape Canaveral in Florida on Monday at 4.58 pm CEST, the asteroid Dimorphos which he should achieve within 26 months.
“Hera” is a follow-up mission: two years ago, as part of the DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), a probe from the NASA space agency deliberately hit the asteroid Dimorphos (also called Didymoon, mind you) – with its around 150 meters in diameter, part of a double asteroid system, of which the second asteroid is called Didymos.
The asteroid’s course changed with DART
At the end of September 2023, DART made it possible for the first time to change the course of an asteroid using man-made technology: since then, Dimorphos (photo below) has been orbiting the central body Didymos. moon in about 11.5 hours instead of the previous twelve hours.
Impact crater under investigation
The ‘Hera’ probe is now intended to investigate what exactly happened then and how efficient the impact really was: the equipment carried will be used to investigate the impact crater for Dimorphos, determine the asteroid’s mass and also its capture internal properties – to be able to do this for future planetary asteroid defense.
Defending asteroids is not as far off as is often thought: “It happens time and time again that asteroids hit the Earth,” explains Rolf Densing, ESA’s director of mission operations, referring to the event in Chelyabinsk in the Urals in February 2013, which took place in 2013. caused by an asteroid about 20 meters in size. About 1,500 people were injured in the Brocken explosion over Russia, mainly from shattering window glass.
Source: Krone
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