Space is a pretty wild place with asteroids, rogue planets and possibly even aliens species being a threat to humanity. Now a new mission by the ESA is about to launch, heading into space to inspect the Dimorphos and Didymos asteroid pair to better understand how we might redirect it if it was coming our way.
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00:00Space is a pretty wild place, with asteroids, rogue planets, and possibly even alien species
00:09being a threat to humanity.
00:11And while NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test, or DART mission, was a successful proof
00:15of concept in redirecting a celestial body, a new mission by the ESA is about to launch,
00:20heading into space to inspect the dimorphous and dimus asteroid pair to better understand
00:25how we might redirect an asteroid coming our way.
00:27The HERA mission is set to begin on October 7th, launching a spacecraft first at Mars,
00:32where it will use the planet's gravity to slingshot towards its destination.
00:36This is Juan Luis Cano, the Planetary Defense Coordinator at the ESA, to explain.
00:41HERA is going to help us a lot in understanding what are the physical properties of asteroids.
00:47And this is very important for us because whenever we want to repeat this experiment
00:52or actually do it in order to defend the Earth from asteroids, it's very important to understand
00:56what is the reaction of these bodies to collisions or any other type of action that we might
01:02like to put on the asteroids.
01:04HERA is slated to arrive at Dinamis and Dimorphis in 2026, meaning just four years from conception
01:09to mission execution, an extremely small time frame for cosmic undertakings of this magnitude.
01:15However, experts agree that if we're going to stop an incoming asteroid headed towards
01:18our planet, Earth's defenses will need to react as quickly as possible.
01:23So we have understood that there is a threat of asteroids falling to the Earth and actually
01:28cause damage to our societies.
01:30So we have to protect ourselves against that.