What if Europe and ESA saved the Earth? Go diamond, go!

The solar system is not as peaceful as we like to believe. On astronomical time scales, chaos also reigns in space. And if you look closely, our planet receives 10 to 100 tons of space material every day. Fortunately, the majority are only dust or small meteorites less than a few meters in size when they enter our atmosphere.

Every five years, a meteor with the energy of 30 Hiroshima bombs enters the atmosphere.

That said, even ten meters on entry can do a lot of damage. Residents of Chelyabinsk, Russia, still remember the nearly 15-meter supercar that flew into the air on February 15, 2013, injuring nearly 1,000 people (mostly due to shards of glass from the shock wave). . The object had a speed of about 19 km/s before it slowed down greatly due to its air resistance and became a fireball at an altitude of 20 km. Here are the inspiring photos from the event:

And that’s for something so small that no one saw it coming… However, the total energy of the event (entry into the atmosphere + detonation) is estimated to be 30 times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Such an event occurs on average every five years, but the larger the asteroid, the less frequent the event. Thus, for a 700-meter-diameter asteroid like Didymos, the rate of occurrence of such an impact is about every 60,000 years, with clearly catastrophic consequences for the entire region.

Planetary defense is a major issue for states and space agencies.

To prepare planetary defenses against major threats from the sky, NASA sent its DART probe in 2022 to assess possible changes in the orbit of the pair, a small moon of Dimorphos. It is now the European Space Agency (ESA) that will provide the “after sales service” by doing the analysis. “Method to remove an asteroid by impactor implemented by US DART mission”.. This is where Hera’s investigation comes into play…

Hera will be able to study the internal structure of an asteroid for the first time.

The 1081 kg space probe will measure the size of the crater created by the DART impact and thus study the interior of an asteroid for the first time. While the mass of the small moon Dimorphos would be estimated with greater precision, a major challenge is in understanding how to remove such objects. In this way, Hera will make it possible to create new guidance software for this type of mission and will simultaneously launch two small satellites (called CubeSats) Milani and Juventus: one will orbit Dimorphos and the other will will come down. Thus dust, structure, porosity and its gravity will be studied very closely.

Hera successfully flew aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 on October 7. He now has two years to travel before reaching his destination in December 2026, and thereby helping to save humanity from a potential threat! Dinosaurs weren’t so lucky…