The Hera probe was rendezvoused with an asteroid that had been knocked down by another NASA probe

SpaceX successfully launched the European Space Agency’s Hera robotic probe from Cape Canaveral in Florida to asteroid Dimorph.

The publication was made as part of the international mission DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), and the aim is to find out if it is possible to prevent collisions of dangerous asteroids with the Earth.

The asteroid Dimorph was already canceled by NASA two years ago, and now the ESA probe has to find out what exactly happened to this space object after the accident.

If all goes according to plan, Hera will reach Dimorph by December 2026, having covered more than 10 million kilometers.

Dimorph – a small moon, 160 meters across – orbits another asteroid, Didyma – and their joint orbit is very close to Earth.

In 2022, NASA announced that they had successfully changed the course of Dimorph by hitting it with a probe. According to experts, this impact was enough to shift the asteroid’s orbit by several meters.

Dimorph was not dangerous on Earth; the purpose of the test was to find out if space agencies can, in principle, do anything if there was a real danger.

When the Hera Dimorph probe arrives, the spacecraft must determine the size and depth of the crater left by the impact of the previous probe.

“We need to study the physical properties of these asteroids. What are they made of? From stones or sand? – explains ESA employee Naomi Murdoch.

This, in turn, will help scientists understand how they can block other asteroids in the future, which include blocks of a wide range of sizes and shapes.

According to experts, the Earth is not in danger of encountering an asteroid similar to the one that killed the dinosaurs in the near future. Moreover, it would be almost impossible not to notice a celestial body of this size.

Scientists working on the DART project and the Hera probe are more interested in space objects 100-200 meters in diameter, which are not easily visible from our planet.

At the same time, they sometimes reach the Earth. In 2013, an asteroid the size of a house exploded over Chelyabinsk. The shock wave from the explosion shattered windows within a radius of 300 square meters. km and damaged many buildings, injuring more than 1,600 people.

Scientists hope that one day they will learn to calculate the approach of such asteroids and send them off course.

“This is not about saving humanity from extinction, but about creating a system that would reduce potential damage,” says Professor Murdoch. affirm. “The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, but we do.”

However, scientists warn that although the NASA test proved that it is possible in principle to change the course of an asteroid, this does not mean that the same thing can be done easily with any space object.

In addition, to prevent an asteroid before it falls into the Earth, you must first sense the danger.