Hera mission to re-visit Dimorphos
Hera is the sequel mission to NASA’s wonderfully successful DART mission to deflect a harmless asteroid. To recap, DART—short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test—smashed into the tiny Dimorphos asteroid in September 2021, altering its orbital trajectory around its larger companion, Didymos, by a whopping 32 minutes (the team would’ve been happy with a 73-second change). The purpose of this exercise was to test a potential planetary defense strategy against legitimately threatening asteroids.
Related story: NASA’s DART Is No More, but This Future Probe Is Hoping to Take a Second Look
Scientists are still in the process of evaluating DART and its full effect on Dimorphos, but the upcoming Hera mission, in which the European Space Agency (ESA) probe will revisit the system in December 2026, will provide added color. Hera will evaluate potential changes to Dimorphos’s orbital trajectory and surface composition, including signs of a potential crater. The probe will bring along two companions, CubeSats named Milani and Juventas, which will perform spectral analyses of the lingering dust cloud created by the impact.
