Watch · ESA missions and science
10 asteroid mysteries that ESA's Hera mission will explore
The Brief
- ESA's Hera spacecraft arrives at the Didymos binary asteroid system in November, targeting the 151-m Dimorphos moonlet.
- Hera will perform a close-up survey of the crash site left by NASA's DART impact on 26 September 2022.
- The mission aims to turn the DART kinetic impact test into a well understood planetary defence deflection technique.
- Beyond planetary defence, the video presents 10 open questions about asteroids that Hera is expected to address.
Why watch · It previews how Europe's first planetary defence mission will test whether kinetic impacts can reliably deflect an asteroid, while probing asteroid structure and history.
- Hera
- Dimorphos
- Didymos
- DART
- planetary defence
Summarised by Claude from the video’s title and description – no transcript was available, so check the video for the details.
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Hera, the European Space Agency’s first mission for planetary defence, arrives at its target body during November, with the goal of gathering precious data on the kinetic impact method of asteroid deflection – while also solving various scientific enigmas. The small-car-sized spacecraft is headed to the 151-m-diameter Dimorphos asteroid, which orbits in turn around its 780-m Didymos parent. Dimorphos is already historic as the first object in the Solar System to have had its orbit changed by human action – when NASA’s DART spacecraft impacted it on 26 September 2022. DART’s impact caused a brightening visible from distant Earth telescopes, but nobody knows what it did to Dimorphos itself. Hera is going there to perform a close-up crash site survey, to help turn DART’s kinetic impact experiment into a well understood planetary defence deflection technique. Scientists are hoping for bonus science as well. Past spacecraft close encounters have revealed asteroids to be dynamic environments with complex histories – and many outstanding questions still to be answered. Here are 10 asteroid mysteries that Hera will explore. Read more: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/10_asteroid_mysteries_Hera_will_explore Credits: European Space Agency (ESA) Access the video on the ESA video library: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/10/10_asteroid_mysteries_that_Hera_will_explore ★ Subscribe: http://bit.ly/ESAsubscribe and click twice on the bell button to receive our notifications. We are Europe's gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related. Copyright information about our videos is available here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Terms_and_Conditions