Four Years to Find Out If We Hit the Right Spot. Hera's About to Tell Us.

ESA's Hera spacecraft successfully completed its largest deep-space maneuver on March 17, burning 123 kg of hydrazine to achieve a 367 m/s delta-v—the largest system test since its October 2024 launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9. The spacecraft is on track for a November rendezvous with the Didymos binary asteroid system, where it will spend six months studying the aftermath of NASA's 2022 DART kinetic impact demonstration. The October braking sequence marks the critical next phase before Hera can finally characterize what DART accomplished for planetary defense.

• •Hera's 367 m/s delta-v maneuver served as a full dress rehearsal for the October braking sequence, testing all systems needed for the asteroid rendezvous with only 350 kg of dry mass available.
• •DART's 2022 impact demonstrably altered Dimorphos's orbit and shifted the entire Didymos-Dimorphos binary system's solar orbit by 0.15 seconds, validating kinetic deflection at mission level.
• •The spacecraft carries 12 scientific payloads, including the Milani and Juventus CubeSats, and will image the DART crater from approximately 1 km—close enough for structural detail but safe from debris ejection.