Hera Aces A Massive Engine Burn On Its Way To Didymos

Image showing the orbital paths of Earth and Didymos. Credit - ESA

In September 2022, humanity crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid - on purpose. The objective of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was to see if we could intentionally modify the orbit of Dimorphos, the small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. According to all accounts, the mission worked spectacularly, but it was a one-way trip, so our ability to see what happened to the binary asteroid system has so far been limited to ground-based telescopes. That wasn’t good enough for the planetary defense community, so they planned a follow up mission called Hera, which, according to a recent press release from its operator, the European Space Agency (ESA), just successfully completed its most dramatic deep-space orbital maneuver.

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