ESA Hera Spacecraft Spots DART Asteroid Target

Europe's Hera spacecraft just captured its first clear view of two asteroids involved in a historic NASA impact test. The spacecraft spotted the Didymos and Dimorphos pair from a distance of about one thousand two hundred eighty kilometers. The target is sitting nearly one hundred ninety-seven million kilometers from Earth right now. Back in twenty twenty-two, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos at six point one kilometers per second. That impact shortened the smaller asteroid's orbit by about thirty-three minutes. But the shift was much larger than computer simulations predicted. Researchers still do not know if the crash left a crater or changed the asteroid's shape. Hera will drop two shoebox-sized satellites close to the targets to investigate the aftermath. Mission controllers plan to release the first detailed images of Dimorphos on November twenty-fifth.