She left Earth on Monday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Its goal: to observe the consequences of the successful impact of the Dart “planetary defense” mission.
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The Hera probe, which will study the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos, took off on Monday October 7 from Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States), aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher. The mission is due to arrive at the end of 2026 near this asteroid system, struck in 2022 by a Dart mission vessel to deviate its trajectory during an unprecedented “planetary defense” test.
Along with Dart, Dimorphos, located some 11 million kilometers from Earth, was struck by a craft the size of a large refrigerator. He managed to move it by reducing its orbit by 33 minutes. Hera, which works hand in hand with this first phase, must go on site to observe in detail the consequences of this impact. The aim is to determine what energy would be necessary, if any, to effectively deflect a threatening asteroid, and to be able to reproduce such a feat.
It is estimated that an object one kilometer in diameter (triggering a global catastrophe like the extinction of the dinosaurs) crashes into the Earth every 500,000 years, and an asteroid 140 m in diameter (the threshold for a catastrophe regional) every 20,000 years.