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The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday, October 7 that the Hera mission lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. local time (14:52 UTC).
ESA shared the launch video of its first planetary defense mission on microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter).
“Lift off! ESA’s Hera mission lifted off on a Spaceflight EX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, US, on October 7 at 10:52 local time (16:52 CEST, 14:52 UTC), ESA posted. Did.
Despite fears that the launch might be delayed due to incoming Hurricane Milton, the probe was lifted off into cloudy skies aboard a SpaceX rocket.
“The Hera probe will fly to a unique target among the 1.3 million asteroids in our solar system – the only body whose orbit was shifted by human action – to solve the unknowns associated with its deflection,” ESA said in a statement. “
ESA said the Hera probe mission aims to observe the damage caused when a NASA spacecraft collides with an asteroid during the first test of Earth’s planetary protection.
“Hera will conduct the first detailed survey of a ‘binary’ – or double-bodied – asteroid, 65803 Didymos, which is orbited by a smaller body, Dimorphos. The main focus of Hera will be Dimorphos, whose orbit around the main body was previously imaged by NASA’s kinetic-impacting DART spacecraft,” ESA said.
Hera is scheduled to visit asteroid 65803 Didymos and its moon in late 2026, collecting additional data about the aftermath of the DART accident and how it changed the asteroid system.
This mission is key to turning DART’s kinetic impact into a technology that could help protect Earth from incoming asteroids in the future.
ESA said, “By accelerating the scientific understanding of this ‘kinetic impact’ technique of asteroid deflection, the Hera experiment will be transformed into a well-understood and replicable technology for protecting Earth from an asteroid on a collision course.” Needed.”
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