ESA’s Hera Mission: Two-Year Journey to Safeguard Earth from Asteroids – Does NASA’s DART Strategy Work?

ESA’s Hera mission will be humankind's first mission to explore a binary asteroid system. The mission will perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos asteroid, which has previously had its orbit shifted by kinetic impact with NASA's DART spacecraft.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully launched its Hera mission, which is a pivotal step taken toward planetary defense, marking a new chapter in humanity’s efforts to protect Earth from potential asteroid impacts. The spacecraft lifted off on October 7, 2024, at 10:52 local time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Hera’s primary objective is to conduct a detailed post-impact survey of the asteroid Dimorphos, which was intentionally struck by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission spacecraft in September 2022. This mission aims to assess the effectiveness of the … Continue reading ESA’s Hera Mission: Two-Year Journey to Safeguard Earth from Asteroids – Does NASA’s DART Strategy Work?