Hera spacecraft launched to investigate asteroid that was deliberately hit by NASA mission
The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully launched Hera, its first planetary defence mission designed to assess whether future asteroids can be deflected from a collision course with Earth.
The probe, which is about the size of a small car, is on its way to a pair of asteroids 195 million kilometres away from Earth, one of which NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into two years ago.
It is ESA’s part of a collaboration with NASA to develop future technologies to protect the Earth from a catastrophic asteroid impact.
“The risk of an asteroid hitting our planet affects everyone everywhere, making planetary defence an inherently international endeavour,” said Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA.
In September 2022, NASA’s DART mission deliberately crashed into the 151m-wide asteroid Dimorphos.
Its goal was to see if smashing a vending machine-sized space probe into an asteroid could nudge it enough to deflect it from a direct hit with Earth.
Read more on this:
Why NASA crashed a spacecraft into a harmless asteroid
Dimorphos is a moon of a larger asteroid, Didymos – the binary asteroid chosen as a target.
It was thought the smaller asteroid would remain in its parent’s gravitational pull, eliminating the risk of a future collision with Earth even if the prang with DART proved unpredictable.
Observations of the DART impact revealed it shifted Dimorphos’s orbit around Didymos by around 32 minutes – 26 times greater than the minimum deflection predicted by NASA scientists.
This image appeared to show DART’s final moments as it impacted with Dimorphos. Pic: ATLAS Project
Hera is designed to provide a detailed post-match analysis of the DART-Dimorphos encounter so it can be developed into a strategy for planetary defence.
As well as studying Dimorphos and Didymos in detail using 11 on-board instruments, it will deploy two micro-satellites that will go into orbit around the asteroid system.
Their missions will end with the two probes landing on Dimorphos’s rubble-like surface, hopefully providing new details about its composition.
“Hera will gather the data we need to turn kinetic impact into a well understood and repeatable technique on which all of us may rely on one day,” said Mr Aschbacher.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off carrying the Hera spacecraft. Pic: Reuters
While most of us think of civilisation-ending asteroid impacts as the stuff of Hollywood movies, they remain a genuine, albeit low, risk.
Over our 4.5 billion year history, Earth has suffered more than three million impacts from various bits of space rock.
Perhaps the most famous was the impact 66 million years ago of a 180km-wide asteroid in what is now Chicxulub, Mexico.
The resulting planetary-scale extinction event helped consign dinosaurs to the natural history books.
An artist’s illustration of the collision between NASA’s DART spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos. Pic: ESA
Things have now quietened down a bit, but just last week an asteroid missed Earth by about one million kilometres – less than three times the distance to the Moon – very close by astronomical standards.
Asteroid 2024 ON was 350m across, not a “planet-killer” but large enough to destroy an entire country and lead to catastrophic global climate impacts.
The concerning thing was that it was spotted less than two months ago – leaving little time to do anything to prevent an impact, if it was heading right for us.
That’s all the more reason for missions like Hera and DART to learn as much as possible about the nature of the asteroid threat, as well as how to defend against it.
Hera will swing by Mars in 2025 to help propel it towards its destination. It’s due to arrive at Didymos and Dimorphos in October 2026.
Israel has approved a plan to capture all of the Gaza Strip and remain there for an unspecified length of time, Israeli officials say.
According to Reuters, the plan includes distributing aid, though supplies will not be let in yet.
The Israeli official told the agency that the newly approved offensive plan would move Gaza’s civilian population southward and keep humanitarian aid from falling into Hamas’s hands.
On Sunday, the United Nations rejected what it said was a new plan for aid to be distributed in what it described as Israeli hubs.
Israeli cabinet ministers approved plans for the new offensive on Monday morning, hours after it was announced that tens of thousands of reserve soldiers are being called up.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far failed to achieve his goal of destroying Hamas or returning all the hostages, despite more than a year of brutal war in Gaza.
Palestinian children struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza. Pic: AP
Officials say the plan will help with these war aims but it would also push hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to southern Gaza, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis.
They said the plan included the “capturing of the strip and the holding of territories”.
It would also try to prevent Hamas from distributing humanitarian aid, which Israel says strengthens the group’s rule in Gaza.
The UN rejected the plan, saying it would leave large parts of the population, including the most vulnerable, without supplies.
It said it “appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy”.
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More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed since the IDF launched its ground offensive in the densely-populated territory, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
It followed the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw around 250 people taken hostage.
A fragile ceasefire that saw a pause in the fighting and the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners collapsed earlier this year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against the Houthis and their Iranian “masters” after the group launched a missile attack on the country’s main international airport.
A missile fired by the group from Yemen landed near Ben Gurion Airport, causing panic among passengers in the terminal building.
“Attacks by the Houthis emanate from Iran,” Mr Netanyahu wrote on X. “Israel will respond to the Houthi attack against our main airport AND, at a time and place of our choosing, to their Iranian terror masters.”
Israeli police officers investigate the missile crater. Pic: Reuters
The missile impact left a plume of smoke and briefly halted flights and commuter traffic at the airport. Some international carriers have cancelled flights to and from Tel Aviv for several days.
Four people were lightly wounded, paramedic service Magen David Adom said.
Air raid sirens went off across Israel and footage showed passengers yelling and rushing for cover.
The attack came hours before senior Israeli cabinet ministers were set to vote on whether to intensify the country’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, and as the army began calling up thousands of reserves in anticipation of a wider operation in the enclave.
Houthi military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree said the group fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the airport.
Iran’s defence minister later told a state TV broadcaster that if the country was attacked by the US or Israel, it would target their bases, interests and forces where necessary.
Israel’s military said several attempts to intercept the missile were unsuccessful.
Air, road and rail traffic were halted after the attack, police said, though it resumed around an hour later.
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Yemen’s Houthis have been firing missiles at Israel since its war with Hamas in Gaza began on 7 October 2023, and while most have been intercepted, some have penetrated the country’s missile defence systems and caused damage.
Israel has previously struck the group in Yemen in retaliation and the US and UK have also launched strikes after the Houthis began attacking international shipping, saying it was in solidarity with Palestinians over Israel’s war with Hamas.
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