Two years ago, Europe sent a spacecraft on a mission to investigate the aftermath of a human-instigated cosmic collision. Now, Hera is closing in on its destination, and it just sent back the first close-up view of its target.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission snapped an image of the Didymos asteroid system from about 37 miles (60 kilometers) away. The black-and-white photo shows the side of Didymos that NASA’s DART spacecraft never got to see before it crashed into its smaller companion, Dimorphos. And, according to the team behind the mission, the asteroid looks very different from this side, with some features that may have been created in the aftermath of the impact.

“The first thing we said was wow!” Patrick Michel, Hera principal investigator, said in a statement. “This feels like looking at a whole new world.”

In September 2022, NASA crashed a 1,260-pound (570 kilogram) spacecraft into Dimorphos, a 558-foot-wide (170-meter) space rock that orbits its larger 2,625-foot-wide (800-meter) companion, Didymos.

Following the collision, ground-based observations revealed that Dimorphos’s orbital period around Didymos shortened from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes. The mission was deemed a success, but scientists needed a closer look to examine the full consequences of the impact.

That’s where Hera comes in. The spacecraft launched on October 7, 2024, as a crucial follow-up to NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Following a two-year journey through space, Hera is nearly ready to get to work, gathering data to help scientists better determine if DART’s success can be turned into a dependable strategy for protecting Earth.

Source link