On the way to Asteroid Dimorphos, Hera’s investigation carried out a closed Mars, capturing rare images of her moon dems, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced Thursday.
Released in October, Hera will not reach its final objective, located 11 million kilometers from the earth in the asteroid belt located between March and Jupiter, only at the end of 2026.
Meanwhile, he approached the red planet on Wednesday to benefit from gravitational assistance. Using the severity of the planet, “we have given an acceleration to the probe, thus changing its trajectory while saving a lot of fuel,” said Pablo Muñoz, a mission analyst during a press conference.
About 600 photos taken by the probe
The probe approached 5,600 km from the Martian surface at a vertiginous speed of 33,480 km/h for about an hour. Which also allowed him to test his instruments. And in particular to take about 600 photos, including rare images of the face opposed to Mars of one of its two moons, Deimos.
The small satellite with irregular shapes, of approximately 12.5 km in diameter, seems dark, contrasts strongly with the appearance of its planet. The origin of the Martian moons, Deimos and Phobos, remains subject to the debate.
Some scientists argue that these are captured asteroids “, but it is difficult to explain from a dynamic point of view,” said Stephan Ulamec of the German Aerospace Center. Others think they come from a massive impact, “but that does not agree with the observed spectra.”
“New game with puzzles”
Before the launch of specific missions to study them, the images taken by Hera will allow “adding a new piece to the puzzle,” according to Marcel Popescu, from the University of Craiova (Romania). In particular, those taken thanks to the infrared and hyperscout images of Tiri, a spectrograph in the near infrared, which explains that Mars seems blue there. They will allow you to better understand the thermophysical properties and the composition of Deimos … before unraveling the mysteries of the dimorphs.
Hera’s mission is to study this little asteroid, deliberately beaten in 2022 by a NASA container to divert her career.
The probe will observe the consequences of the impact, which has reduced the orbit of this body by 160 meters in diameter in 33 minutes, which forms a binary system with a larger asteroid called didos.
The objective is to assess whether such a technique would be effective in the future to divert an asteroid that would threaten the earth. Given this natural risk, space agencies are working to establish a “planetary defense” system, one of the other aspects of which is coordinated global monitoring to detect asteroids possibly dangerous as soon as possible.
A second developing planetary development mission
This is what happened last December with the discovery of YR4, whose probability of collision with the Earth in 2032 briefly reached 3.1% before falling to 0.
“It is a scheme that we will see more and more in the future,” said Richard Moissl, head of the ESA Planetary Defense Office. “With the increase in surveys, we will discover more asteroids”, which will lead to more cases in which the probability of impact will increase before falling to zero with more precise observations.
ESA develops a second planetary defense mission to observe Apophis, an asteroid of 350 meters in diameter, which will pass only 32,000 km from the earth on April 13, 2029 and then will be visible to the naked eye.
Subject to the approval of the ESA Ministerial Council, Ramses should take off in 2028 to reach the asteroid two months before his focus on the earth and observe the effects that the earthly attraction exerts on him.
Source: BFM TV
