# Spacecraft Launches to Study Asteroid Altered by NASA! 🚀

**URL:** <https://onehack.st/t/spacecraft-launches-to-study-asteroid-altered-by-nasa/293119>\
**Category:** News & Articles\
**Tags:** learning\
**Created:** [October 9, 2024, 12:30am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/spacecraft-launches-to-study-asteroid-altered-by-nasa/293119 "2024-10-09T00:30:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TheJoker](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/thejoker/32/22660_2.png) [@TheJoker](https://onehack.st/u/TheJoker)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2024, 12:30am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/spacecraft-launches-to-study-asteroid-altered-by-nasa/293119/1 "2024-10-09T00:30:09Z")

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**Summary:**

1. **Hera Mission Launch**  
The European Space Agency launched the Hera spacecraft on October 7, 2024, to study the asteroid Dimorphos.

2. **Impact from DART**  
This mission follows NASA’s successful Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022, which altered Dimorphos’s orbit.

3. **Arrival Timeline**  
Hera is scheduled to arrive at Dimorphos in December 2026 to analyze the effects of the impact.

4. **Scientific Goals**  
The spacecraft will investigate the impact crater’s size and depth and deploy two cube-shaped probes for further analysis.

5. **Background**  
Dimorphos is a 160-meter-wide moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos, part of a binary asteroid system.

**Read more at:** [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly694y5kgeo) | [NASA’s DART Mission](https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/10/11/2052229/nasa-says-dart-mission-succeeded-in-shifting-asteroids-orbit)