ESA lanched its first planetary defence mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched its first planetary defense mission on October 7, 2024. The Hera mission is focused on protecting the planet from asteroid impacts. The project aims to explore the possibility of deflecting asteroids from their flight paths. The target of the mission is the binary asteroid Didymos. This mission represents Europe's contribution to international cooperation and follows NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) project, which conducted the first-ever test of kinetic deflection on the smaller of the two asteroids. Hera will now study the impact's consequences on the asteroid's orbital change.