This week, despite the approach of hurricane Milton towards Florida, the spacecraft HERA launched from Cape Canaveral. It is heading towards the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos.  The aim is to measure the consequences of an impact on Dimorphos by NASA’s DART spacecraft.  DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test.  This was the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through a kinetic impact.  Asteroid impacts with Earth are rare but they can have devastating consequences.  For example, around sixty-six million years ago an object from space struck the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This led to the K-Pg extinction event (or at least it played a significant role in the mass extinction event).  Non-avian dinosaurs became extinct.

HERA is on its way to the two asteroids to determine precisely how the orbital period and shape of the asteroids have changed after the impact with DART.

Asteroid impact management via deflection.

HERA sent to investigate the impact consequences of DART on the small asteroid Dimorphos that orbits the larger asteroid Didymos.  These two missions are part of an on-going project to develop the ability to avoid planetary asteroid impacts.  Picture credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Picture credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

To read an earlier blog post about the search for the bolide that lead to a mass extinction event: Where Did the Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Come From?

Asteroid Impact Management by Deflection

The DART spacecraft collided with Dimorphos on the 26th of September 2022.  It was travelling at over 3.7 miles per second (6 kilometres per second). The nearly head-on collision has shortened the time it takes the small asteroid moonlet to orbit the much larger Didymos by thirty-three minutes.  The goal of the DART project was to influence the orbital period of both asteroids around each other.  HERA has now been sent on a two-year journey to the double asteroid to study how exactly the orbital period and shape of the asteroids have changed over a six-month period.

Researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin were involved in both the DART and HERA projects.  The HERA mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) is now tasked with answering questions such as did an impact crater form on Dimorphos?  Was the entire asteroid altered?  What does the impact tell us about the constituents of these two bolides?

HERA will aim to create a detailed map of the surface and internal structure of the moonlet Dimorphos using high-resolution visual, laser-based, and radar data.

Ultimately, the objective is to develop the ability to deflect the trajectory of space objects.  If this can be done, then collisions with Earth can be avoided.

If only the Dinosauria had developed such a technology to avoid asteroid impacts…

Everything Dinosaur acknowledges the assistance of a media release from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in the compilation of this article.

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