The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera spacecraft is designed to study asteroids in the Hera asteroid mission Hera is scheduled to be launched in October 2024. Its target is the asteroid Didimos (Didymos) and Dimorphos (Dimorphos), who are satellites of Didymos. . In 2022, NASA, the United States, sent the DART spacecraft (Dual Asteroid Redirect Test – DART) to fall to Dimorphos. To shift orbits, test the possibility of changing the orbits of near-Earth celestial objects. and has a chance to fall into the world It will be used as a model to protect the world if such an event occurs in the future.

But recently ESA scientists say that before the Hera spacecraft reached Didimos The spacecraft will fly past Mars in March 2025, within 6,000 kilometers of the surface of the red planet when it met Mars. Hera uses the star’s gravity to accelerate. This helps to save a lot of fuel. It also speeds up spaceship access to Didimos. Explore both Mars and its moon Deimos, a smaller and more distant moon from Mars.

Information about the moon Deimos The data collected by Hera will be useful for planning the Martian Moons eExploration (MMX) mission of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The goal is to study Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos. Landing on the moon Phobos Then samples of the object were brought back to Earth.

Credit: ESA-Science Office