SpaceX Launches European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera Asteroid Probe
The main Hera spacecraft and its two partner cubsats, Milani and Juventas, launched atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at 10.52 a.m. EST.
(Cape Canaveral, Florida) SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission to interplanetary transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC_40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida this morning at 10.52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT).
Photo of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifting off on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission this morning (Oct. 7) at 10.52 a.m. courtesy of SpaceX on X, @spacex.
The main Hera spacecraft and its two partner cubists, Milani and Juventas, launched atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
This morning’s mission marked the 23rd and final launch for its 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, per SpaceX.
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, which Falcon 9 launched in November 2021. The mission will provide 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, according to SpaceX.
For background, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) knocked the Dimorphos asteroid off course in September of 2022. Hera will assess the aftermath of that impact and study both the surface and internal structure of the asteroid in greater detail, according to Space.com.
Dimorphos is a moonlet of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos; binary asteroid system was previously visited by NASA’s DART spacecraft, which intentionally collided with Dimorphos in 2022 and changed its orbit around Didymos as a demonstration of a planetary defense technique designed to change the trajectory of a potentially hazardous asteroid, per Space.com.
Hera is expected to arrive at Dimorphos in late 2026, at which time it will evaluate the size and depth of the crater created by DART and the efficiency of the impact.
