{"id":804187,"date":"2026-11-03T08:34:33","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T13:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=804187"},"modified":"2026-11-03T08:34:33","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T13:34:33","slug":"10-asteroid-mysteries-that-hera-will-explore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=804187","title":{"rendered":"10 asteroid mysteries that Hera will explore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"modal__tab-content--details\">\n<div class=\"modal__tab-description\">\n<p>Hera, the European Space Agency\u2019s 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 \u2013 while also solving various scientific enigmas.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 when NASA\u2019s DART spacecraft impacted it on 26 September 2022.<\/p>\n<p>DART\u2019s 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\u2019s kinetic impact experiment into a well understood planetary defence deflection technique.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists are hoping for bonus science as well. Past spacecraft close encounters have revealed asteroids to be dynamic environments with complex histories \u2013 and many outstanding questions still to be answered. Here are 10 asteroid mysteries that Hera will explore.<\/p>\n<p>Read more.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t<label style=\"display: block; font-size: 0.9em; color: #8197A6; margin: 3rem 0 -1rem 0;\">Embed code<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<textarea rows=\"4\" cols=\"60\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"10 asteroid mysteries that ESA&#039;s Hera mission will explore\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BvjWVyde5Ns?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/textarea><\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Videos\/2026\/10\/10_asteroid_mysteries_that_Hera_will_explore?rand=771654\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hera, the European Space Agency\u2019s 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&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":804188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-804187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ESA"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=804187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/804188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=804187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=804187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=804187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}