Spacecraft Launches to Study Asteroid Altered by NASA! 🚀

News & Articles
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Summary:

  1. Hera Mission Launch
    The European Space Agency launched the Hera spacecraft on October 7, 2024, to study the asteroid Dimorphos.

  2. Impact from DART
    This mission follows NASA’s successful Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022, which altered Dimorphos’s orbit.

  3. Arrival Timeline
    Hera is scheduled to arrive at Dimorphos in December 2026 to analyze the effects of the impact.

  4. Scientific Goals
    The spacecraft will investigate the impact crater’s size and depth and deploy two cube-shaped probes for further analysis.

  5. Background
    Dimorphos is a 160-meter-wide moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos, part of a binary asteroid system.

Read more at: BBC | NASA’s DART Mission