[U] The Next Step, In Our Learnings -- About "Whacking" Asteroids Off-Course -- To Potentially Protect Earth... Is Now Under-Sail, From ESA and JAXA...

Due to other commitments, we are slightly delayed in getting this ESA good news out. We covered the DART mission closely, and now the European Space Agency has successfully launched a follow on analysis mission. Excellent! [Update: see the ESA video below the pull-quote for mission flight specs and timelines.]

The follow on Hera journey into deep space is being overseen from ESA's facilities in Darmstadt, Germany. "Hera is finally on its way to Didymos; today we are writing a new page of space history,” said Hera mission manager Ian Carnelli. “This deep space mission took shape from contract signing to launch in only four years, a testimony to the hard work and dedication of the Hera team across ESA, European industry, science, and the Japanese space agency JAXA”. Here's the full press packet, on it all:

. . .ESA’s first planetary defence spacecraft has departed planet Earth. The Hera mission is headed to a unique target among the more than 1.3 million known asteroids in our Solar System – the only body to have had its orbit shifted by human action – to solve lingering mysteries associated with its deflection.

By sharpening scientific understanding of the ‘kinetic impact’ technique of asteroid deflection, Hera aims to make Earth safer. The mission is part of a broader ambition to turn terrestrial asteroid impacts into a fully avoidable class of natural disaster.

Developed as part of ESA’s Space Safety programme and sharing technological heritage with the Agency’s Rosetta comet hunter, Hera lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA, on 7 October at 10:52 local time (16:52 CEST, 14:52 UTC) with its solar arrays deploying about one hour later.

The automobile-sized Hera will carry out the first detailed survey of a ‘binary’ -- or double-body -- asteroid, 65803 Didymos, which is orbited by a smaller body, Dimorphos. Hera’s main focus will be on the smaller of the two, whose orbit around the larger asteroid was changed by NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, demonstrating asteroid deflection by kinetic impact, in 2022. . . .

This is truly an amazing time to be alive, and following all the life-sciences. And space-science.

That said, do keep Florida (post Hurricane Milton) in your morning meditations, and if you are in a position to donate to relief efforts there, the American Red Cross is a good vehicle for that.



Onward.

नमस्ते