From May 30 to June 3, Nice is hosting the symposium of the Hera space mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). Scientists dedicated to our protection once morest the risk of asteroid impact.
Six months and fourteen days. This is the time left on Earth before a collision with a comet (10 km in diameter), in the satirical film Don’t Look Up: Cosmic Denial, released in December 2021, on the Netflix platform.
From the moment the scientists understand the imminence of the disaster, a desperate race once morest time begins to convince the White House to organize the response. The cries of alarm from science will, alas, come up once morest the contempt of the media and politicians… Until the inevitable catastrophe.
Could this fiction one day become reality? A celestial body, might it fall on the earth?
The scientific community is in any case trying to prepare, to intervene if the situation arises:
The objective is to be able to divert an asteroid the day it arrives on earth. Find out what they are made of, how they are made.
Nice Côte d’Azur Observatory
Hera, the first planetary defense mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) is under development following the signing of a contract worth 129.4 million euros awarded mid-September 2020.
This assignment is an international planetary defense collaboration between European and American scientists. From May 30 to June 3, 2022meets in Nice the scientific community dedicated to our protection once morest le risk of asteroid impact, under the aegis of the Observatory of the Côte d’Azur.
The data sought covers:
an incredible number of fields ranging from geology to the physics of impacts, through the study of granular media
Patrick Michel, principal investigator of the Hera mission, at the Nice Côte d’Azur Observatory
There is also the interpretation of spectral data which gives access to the composition of the asteroid and the interpretation of radar data for the internal structure.
The Hera space mission is momentous for planetary defense, as it participates in the first asteroid deflection test with the mission DART of NASA and aims to study and understand a near-earth asteroid (a category that might pose a danger to our planet.)
The DART probe was thus launched by the NASA on November 24. After an observation phase, it will crash voluntarily on the surface of the small asteroid Dimorphos (a moon 160 m in diameter in orbit around Didymos, an asteroid 780 m in diameter), end of September 2022.
In video, the takeoff of the probe:
This is “will be historic“, said at a press conference Tom Statler, NASA scientist participating in this mission.
For the first time, mankind will change the motion of a natural celestial body in space.
Tom Statler, NASA
This is only a general rehearsal, the asteroid in question representing in no way a threat to the Earth. Hera will have the delicate task of carrying out a detailed post-impact study in order to transform this large-scale experiment into a mastered and reproducible asteroid deflection technique.
