Europe’s Hera reaches Dimorphos to measure the effects of NASA’s asteroid impact
Europe’s Hera spacecraft has reached the asteroid system where NASA’s DART probe struck Dimorphos in September 2022, beginning a close investigation of the impact. Astrophysicist Martin Jutzi of the University of Bern told Keystone-SDA that Hera’s data should help researchers assess how the impact changed the asteroid moon and how efficiently it transferred momentum.
Bottom line — Hera’s images and measurements should test Bern researchers’ prediction that the 160-metre Dimorphos is a loosely bound pile of debris.
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DART shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos from 11 hours 55 minutes to about 11 hours 22 minutes, according to SWI swissinfo.ch.
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The Bern research team’s simulations predicted that DART’s impact deformed the whole asteroid moon, rather than producing only a crater.
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SWI swissinfo.ch reports that Hera is expected to approach to about 30 kilometres in November for its first usable images, then to about 10 kilometres by December.
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Jutzi told Keystone-SDA that Dimorphos’s mass is still unknown, limiting precise calculations of how much momentum and energy DART transferred.
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Jutzi said objects 100–200 metres across might hit Earth every 10,000–20,000 years and could have devastating regional or global consequences.