posted 10-06-2024 04:21 PM               

This topic is for comments and questions in response to the updates under: ESA's Hera to rendezvous with binary asteroids.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Hera is a planetary defense mission that will study the impact NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission spacecraft had on the Dimorphos asteroid. Hera will provide valuable data for future asteroid deflection missions and science to help humanity’s understanding of asteroid geophysics as well as solar system formation and evolutionary processes.

posted 10-06-2024 04:23 PM               

SpaceX is targeting Monday (Oct. 7) for Falcon 9's launch of the Hera mission to an interplanetary transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT).

Due to the additional performance required to deliver the payload to an interplanetary transfer orbit, this mission marks the 23rd and final launch for this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15, ISI EROS C-3, Korea 425, Maxar 1, ASBM, and 10 Starlink missions.

posted 10-07-2024 07:24 AM               

Hera, ESA's first planetary defense mission, is headed to space.

Hera will fly to a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System – the first body to have had its orbit shifted by human action – to probe lingering unknowns related to its deflection.