2023-10-28 22:52:19
[NTD News, Beijing time, October 29, 2023]The European Space Agency’s latest plan is that the HERA spacecraft will go to the twin asteroids that were artificially impacted last year to study how to protect the earth from asteroid impacts. In September last year, NASA’s “Dart” spacecraft DART hit the harmless asteroid “Dimorphos”, one of the twin stars millions of miles away, successfully changing the orbit of the asteroid for the first time. . The Boomerang spacecraft carved a crater on the asteroid Dimorphos, flinging debris into space. The asteroid is 525 feet tall and its parent star is a larger space rock called Didymos. The administrator of NASA said that after the impact, the asteroid took one week to orbit its parent star. 32 minutes shortened. Inspired by NASA’s Boomerang mission, the European Space Agency is planning to return to Dimorphos to conduct detailed post-impact investigations. The spacecraft carrying out the two missions is named “HERA” after the ancient Greek patron saint of marriage, and is scheduled to be launched in October 2024. “Hera” will carry two small drone-like cubesats to the asteroid Dimorphos, deploy around the parent star Didymos and the asteroid Dimorphos, and finally land on Dimorphos. Ian Carnelli, ESA Project Manager: “HERA’s first mission will carry a radar that will allow us to understand the internal structure of the asteroid, and will carry a suite of instruments such as a thermal imaging camera and a multispectral camera to understand the characteristics of the asteroid. This It is a basic information supplement to the data collected by “Boomerang” so that this technology can be used on asteroids in the future. Scientists said that if an asteroid threatens the earth in the future, the “Hera” mission will play an important role in developing asteroid defense technology.Comprehensive reporting by NTDTV reporters Li Qingyi and Tian Yuan
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