The Hera spacecraft reveals the first Earth-Moon image taken on a collision course with an asteroid[우주를 보다]

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A view of the Earth and the Moon taken on October 11 using the Hera spacecraft‘s Asteroid Framing Camera (AFC) from a distance of about 1.6 million km (about 4 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon (Source: ESA ).

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) asteroid Hera, which is on track to collide with an asteroid, has released the first stunning images of Earth and the Moon.

The Döhera probe, which was successfully launched toward the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos on October 7, was intended to be a follow-up to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. After operating the scientific equipment, the probe returned to its home planet Earth and took the last pictures of the Earth and the Moon floating in the darkness of space.

Didymos is an asteroid with a diameter of 780 if it orbits the sun approximately every two years. At its closest position to the Sun, it is very close to Earth’s orbit, making it an ideal asteroid for sending probes from Earth. But what is more interesting is that it has a satellite, Dimorphos, with a diameter of 170 meters.

“Hello, Earth!” ESA began by saying “Hello, Earth!” while he released a new image of Hera posted on once again aiming at our planet. “This allowed Hera to capture the first images of the Earth and the Moon from over 1 million km away!”

The Hera mission aims to revisit the double asteroid system explored by the DART spacecraft in 2022. During that mission, DART demonstrated planetary protection technology designed to protect the path of an asteroid which could be dangerously changed by deliberately colliding with Dymophos and changing its orbit around Didymos.

Now Hera was launched to assess what happened after the impact and to study in more detail the surface and internal structure of the asteroid with the help of two partner CubeSats, Milani and Joventas.

The images of Hera were taken using three instruments on October 10 and 11, and will ultimately be used to study and analyze the probe’s asteroid target. These instruments were deployed for the first time as part of the mission’s post-launch evaluation. During one such study, the Hera asteroid deck, which houses the spacecraft’s scientific instruments, was able to point back to Earth and capture distant views of our planet and moon, according to a statement from ESA.

The first image was taken using one of Hera’s two Asteroid Framing Cameras (AFC), designed for navigation and scientific research. In the AFC view the Earth is in the lower left and the Moon in the center of the frame, about 1.6 million km away. Bright white clouds can be seen in the sky above the sunny Pacific Ocean.

Hera’s instruments were mounted on the upper panel of the spacecraft’s cube-shaped body, known as the ‘asteroid deck’ (Source: ESA).

The second image was taken from a distance of about 1.4 million km using the spacecraft’s Thermal Infrared Imager (TIRI) instrument provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The Earth is in the center of the image, with the North Pole rising up, capturing the east coast of the United States and the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, the moon is visible as a bright dot in the upper right corner of the image.

“TRI will image the asteroid Dimorphos in the central sky region to record the surface temperature of the asteroid,” ESA officials said in a statement.

Image of the Hera probe investigating the Dimorphos moon of the asteroid Didymos (Source: ESA)

Finally, the virtual color image published by ESA was captured using the HyperScout H instrument. The instrument can detect the mineral composition of the asteroid through light waves invisible to the human eye. From about the same vantage point as AFC, the Earth was captured in the lower left corner of the image, and the Moon was captured in the upper right corner.

Hera will reach the asteroid system in late 2026. The probe will assess the size and depth of the craters created by DART and the effectiveness of the impact, which will provide valuable information for future asteroid dispersal missions.

Gwangsik Lee, Science Column joand999@naver.com

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