Hera, the first planetary defense mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), completed its survey close to Mars already its moon, Deimos, an important milestone on the trip that the ship is making to the Didymos Binary Asteroid System.
Hera orchestrated “a successful overflow”, taking advantage of the seriousness of the red planet to guide her towards destination asteroids, while trying her instruments, says the general director of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, in the social network X.
Tomorrow that one will release data of this approach and reveal images.
As planned, the three camera systems of the ship obtained images of Mars from about 5,000 kilometers and dems from only 1,000 kilometers, providing a unique opportunity to study this small and “mysterious object”, and calibrate the scientific instruments of the mission, says ESA on its website.
The size of a car, Hera was launched to space in October 2024 and, since then, he travels to the only asteroid whose orbit has been modified by human action, a destination that will arrive in autumn of 2026 to scrutinize the sequels of that kinetic impact.
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Hera will seek to obtain information from Dimorphos, one of the asteroids around Mars
The overfruit by Mars is one of the necessary maneuvers to complete the trip. According to previous data, the one is waiting for them to confirm tomorrow, the maximum approach of the ship to Mars occurred at 12:51 hours GMT and its moon deimos at 12:07 GMT hours.
The ultimate goal of this mission will be to scrutinize the binary asteroid system, fixing especially in the smallest of the two bodies, called Dimorphos, 150 meters in diameter. This, in September 2022, was hit by NASA’s Dart ship, which managed to divert its orbit -a half hour.
Hera is, together with Dart, a planetary defense mission and both are integrated into the AIDA collaboration (Asteroid Impact and Defecion Assessment). With them the two space agencies intend to demonstrate the technology capable of diverting asteroids to protect the land from an eventual impact.
On Dart’s feat there are already enough data thanks to its camera and a small Italian satellite (Lyciacube) that detached from the ship a few days before and obtained images of the pen of fragments ejected in the collision, in addition to the gaze of several telescopes.
However, there is a lack of crucial information to really understand what happened there and to refine the models to divert asteroids.
Hera, in which about 100 European companies and institutes participated -in addition to Jaxa Japanese agency -will have to respond, for example, if a crater was formed in Dimorphos or the collision deformed the asteroid globally.
With EFE information
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