A European spacecraft willhead to an asteroidnext ten on a missionary station of wandering Department of Defense – but only after its predecessor was canceled due to a lack of funding .
The mission from the European Space Agency ( ESA ) is called Hera , and it will set up towards a pair of near - Earth asteroid called Didymos in 2023 , arriving in 2026 . The former called Didymain is 780 meters ( 2,600 feet ) across , while the latter known as Didymoon is 160 meters ( 525 feet ) .
Hera will focus on the smaller Didymoon , taking in high spirits - resolution pictures and mapping the asteroid with optical maser and radio wave . This would be the smallest asteroid a spacecraft has ever visited , and almost the first mission to a binary asteroid – two asteroid orbiting each other .
We say almost because Hera will actually be bewilder to the dyad of asteroid by NASA’sDouble Asteroid Redirection Test(DART ) . In October 2022 , this military mission will slam dance into Didymoon and seek to very slimly alter its orbit .
Observatories on Earth will go after the subsequent change in the asteroid ’s orbit . But Hera , when it get in , will be used to see how much the range has changed up tight . This could tell us if an impactor is a practicable method to push an asteroid out of our path . If there was an asteroid with our name on it in the future , then hitting it with an impactor year in forward motion might be a direction to make it miss us .
“ Such a binary asteroid system is the perfect testbed for a planetary defense experimentation but is also an only new environment for asteroid investigation , ” Hera manager Ian Carnelli said in astatement . “ Although double star make up 15 per centum of all known asteroids , they have never been explored before , and we prognosticate many surprises . ”
This is all a little bit awkward though , because ESA was originally supposed to vanish with NASA on this mission with a space vehicle called the Asteroid Impact Mission ( AIM ) . That would have studied the impact and the ensue motion up close alongside DART , set in motion in October 2020 , but ESAcanceled the missionin 2016 .
The mission will be hugely exciting regardless though . ESA said Hera has now entered its next engineering phase , while DART has passed its preliminary design review and is move to its elaborate design level . Here ’s hoping for no cancellations this time around .
