A NASA spacecraft knocked into an asteroid two years ago to test planetary defense. Now, a new mission will inspect the damage, with the goal of helping future asteroid deflection.
A European spacecraft is heading to study an asteroid after NASA purposely knocked it off its course more than two years ago.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera spacecraft lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. ET on Monday.
It’s scheduled to conduct a «crash scene investigation», researchers said.
Hera’s mission will focus on the asteroid Dimorphos, where a golf cart-sized spacecraft crashed on Sept. 26, 2022. That mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos, a bigger asteroid, by 33 minutes, researchers said.
