Hera
Hera is a European mission launched in 2024 to study the Didymos asteroid pair after DART's impact.
Hera is a European Space Agency mission launched in October 2024 to visit the binary asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos. It is named after the Greek goddess. Its job is to inspect the results of NASA's DART impact in close-up detail.
Hera carries cameras, a laser altimeter and other instruments, and two small companion spacecraft called cubesats, Milani and Juventas. These will study the surface composition and use radar to look inside Dimorphos. On its way, Hera flew past Mars in March 2025 and photographed its small moon Deimos.
By measuring the mass of Dimorphos, the size of DART's crater and how the asteroid's shape changed, Hera will turn the DART experiment into a well-calibrated test of planetary defence. That will make it possible to predict how much push a future impactor would give a dangerous asteroid of a given size and structure.
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