Swiss-backed ‘Hera’ asteroid mission hits key milestone with Mars flyby
Planetary defense mission with Swiss participation at the start
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Listening: Swiss-backed ‘Hera’ asteroid mission hits key milestone with Mars flyby
The European “Hera” asteroid defence mission, with Switzerland on board, has hit a key milestone. On Wednesday afternoon, the probe swung by Mars to pick up speed for the next leg of its journey.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the Red Planet’s gravity will tweak the probe’s path, cutting months off the journey and saving a lot of fuel.
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ESA says this flyby is the first time the instruments of “Hera” have been used for science, focusing on Deimos, Mars’ smaller moon. The images from this manoeuvre will be released on Thursday, but first, the probe needs to point its antenna towards Earth to send the data.
Switzerland participates in European defence against asteroids mission
The mission’s main goal is the Dimorphos asteroid. Two and a half years ago, NASA’s “Dart”(Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission sent a probe to crash into Dimorphos to change its course. Now, “Hera” will study the exact effects of that impact.
To achieve this, the University of Bern has created a model simulating the probe’s impact. “The mission should help us understand how an asteroid can be deflected onto a collision course with Earth,” Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern told the Keystone-SDA news agency just before the launch last October.
ESA called Wednesday’s manoeuvre a key milestone for the probe, which is set to arrive at its destination in December 2026.
Translated from French with DeepL/sp
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