MIAMI: Europe’s Hera probe launched on Monday on a mission to assess the damage caused by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) when it smashed into an asteroid during the first test of Earth’s planetary defence system.
Despite concerns over Hurricane Milton’s approach, the SpaceX rocket carrying the Hera probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:00 am local time (1500 GMT) into cloudy skies. The launch had faced uncertainty, with only a 15 percent chance of proceeding due to poor weather.
However, the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed a smooth takeoff, met with applause from ground teams.
Hera’s mission is to investigate the aftermath of the DART mission, which deliberately crashed a spacecraft into the Dimorphos asteroid in 2022, located approximately 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth. The fridge-sized DART spacecraft successfully knocked Dimorphos off its original orbit.
Describing the impact site as a “crime scene,” the ESA hopes Hera will provide vital insights on how Earth can best defend itself from future threats posed by space rocks.
In addition to weather-related concerns, the launch had also faced a potential delay due to an anomaly with a Falcon 9 rocket during SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronaut mission last month. However, the US Federal Aviation Administration gave the green light on Sunday.
Hera is expected to pass Mars next year, arriving near Dimorphos in December 2026. Once there, it will begin a six-month investigation to study the asteroid’s post-impact condition.
Although Dimorphos never posed a threat to Earth, the DART impact significantly shortened its orbit around its larger companion asteroid, Didymos, by 33 minutes. However, much remains unknown, including the extent of the damage and the exact pre-impact characteristics of the asteroid, which is about the size of an Egyptian pyramid.
Patrick Michel, the Hera mission’s principal investigator, said that early analysis suggests Dimorphos may be more of a “loose pile of rubble” than a solid rock, held together by gravity. He added that the DART impact may have “completely deformed” the asteroid, instead of just creating a crater.
This mission is critical to enhancing knowledge about low-gravity celestial bodies, whose behavior “defies intuition,” Michel noted.
An asteroid larger than a kilometer wide is estimated to strike Earth once every 500,000 years, with the potential for catastrophic consequences. Even smaller asteroids, around 140 meters wide, could still destroy major cities and are believed to impact Earth every 20,000 years.
Though none are expected to hit Earth in the next century, only 40 percent of these mid-sized space rocks have been identified by scientists.