Spacecraft Hera Dispatch To Investigate Asteroid Remains

The European Space Agency (ESA) already launched its spaceraft to explore what remains of the asteroid Dimorphos, the cosmic body that NASA successfully destroyed last year during its pioneering planetary defense test in 2022.

The "crash scene" surveillance team includes the spacecraft Hera as well as two tiny cubesats, which was launched on 8 Octiber onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Hera was successfully deployed by the rocket around 76 minutes after takeoff.

The mission forms part of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), an effort that involved smashing an asteroid system with a sacrificial spacecraft to see if humanity could meaningfully alter the course of a potentially dangerous asteroid.

The DART mission was deemed a full success. However, there are still questions about what exactly went down during the intentional cosmic collision and the full extent of the aftermath — and that's where Hera comes in.

The Hera mission has been described by ESA scientists as a "crash scene investigation," with the mission's principal investigator Patrick Michel telling CNN that "Hera will close the loop by providing us in detail the final outcome of the DART impact."

Instead of targeting a single asteroid, the DART mission targeted a binary asteroid system, which comprises two distinct celestial bodies: a larger asteroid named Didymos, and its smaller companion, Dimorphos. Dimorphos, which is considered a moonlet to Didymos, is what NASA actually intended to destrot in order to push Didymos off course.

If things go to plan, Hera will reach the crash site by October 2026. Armed with 11 instruments, it'll spend six weeks analyzing the scene before sending its shoebox-sized cubesats named Juventas and Milani in to do some specialty work. Juventas will use radar to spy beneath the asteroids' surface, while Milani will eye the rocks with a special imager designed to deduce their mineral compositions.