The European Space Agency (ESA) is progressing with its planetary defense capabilities through the Hera mission, launched in October 2023. The spacecraft recently completed its first major maneuver, adjusting its trajectory for a gravitational assist from Mars in 2025.
The Hera mission is a follow-up to NASA's DART experiment, which involved a deliberate impact on an asteroid in 2022 to test the feasibility of altering its trajectory via kinetic impact. This experiment successfully demonstrated that such collisions can indeed divert an asteroid's path, a crucial technology for potential threats to Earth from hazardous asteroids.
However, scientists aim to gather more data on the effects of the DART mission. While it is known that the impact altered both the shape and trajectory of the asteroid, researchers need to ascertain the asteroid's composition and the precise consequences of the collision. Therefore, Hera is on its way to the Dimorphos asteroid, targeted by DART, to conduct detailed observations of the impact's aftermath.
To achieve this, Hera executed two trajectory correction maneuvers on October 23 and November 6, steering it toward Mars. According to Sylvain Lodieu, the spacecraft operations manager, the first impulse was crucial for course correction, while the second fine-tuned the trajectory. The next maneuver is scheduled for November 21 to finalize the approach to Mars.
After its close encounter with Mars, Hera will utilize the planet's gravity to accelerate toward its ultimate destination—the Dimorphos asteroid, a smaller companion of the Didymos asteroid, which the spacecraft is expected to reach by the end of 2026. During its flyby of Mars, the spacecraft will also study its moon Deimos from a distance of approximately 300 kilometers.
ESA scientists believe that the gravitational assist from Mars is a significant advantage, allowing for reduced fuel consumption and speeding up the mission by several months.
Previously, it was reported that the Hera spacecraft sent stunning images of Earth from a distance of 2 million kilometers.