Planetary defense continues with the Hera Mission

Do you remember that idea to defend the earth from a giant asteroid on a collision course, well, the European space agency took another important step in that mission. They have just launched the Hera spacecraft that departed from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. in the United States, carrying the Robotic Probe on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. It has a fascinating mission ahead of it to evaluate the impact caused by the asteroid deflection experiment previously carried out by NASA, more precisely in 2022 with the Dart mission that targeted Dimorphus, an asteroid orbiting a larger one called Didymos, the idea is clear to test if we are able to divert a dangerous asteroid from the collision path with Earth.

Although the collision already occurred, the event was observed 11 million kilometers away from Earth, which makes it very difficult to see the details with clarity. Telescopes from the ground managed to capture some grainy images of the impact and scientists estimate that the collision altered the orbit of Dimorphus in about 33 minutes, that is, almost 5%, in addition an immense cloud of debris was ejected into space, but these are only estimates. The only way to really understand what happened is to go directly to the asteroid and that is where Hera's mission comes into play. The probe, the size of a compact car, was designed to make a detailed study of both the impact and the asteroids themselves. When Hera reaches her destination in approximately 2 years, she will carry out a thorough investigation, determine the size of the Impact Crater, understand how the asteroid was deformed, even analyze its mineralogy, structure and mass, for this she will be equipped with a series of technological instruments such as a hyperspectral imager, a laser altimeter, a thermal infrared camera and a device that will measure the doubling effect, essential to calculate the mass and gravitational field of asteroids.

This is important because the composition and structure of an asteroid can drastically influence how it responds to a deflection attempt. If it is a hard, metallic asteroid it reacts one way, if it is a loose collection of rocks and dust the story is very different. , but Hera is not alone in this mission, she also carries with her two cubesats, small satellites that will fly freely around Dimorphus and collect subsurface and surface data, investigate the composition of the dust launched by the impact and study the internal structure of the asteroids. , something that may be crucial for future diversion attempts. After completing the main study Hera will even practice autonomous maneuvers around asteroids, using visual tracking of landmarks and to reach its objective the probe will have special help, it will pass by Mars in 2025 using the gravity of the red planet to adjust its trajectory and find Dimorphus and Didimos. So now we just have to wait and hope that this mission provides valuable information that can protect our planet from future threats.