Asteroid-smash aftermath: Why Europe is sending a probe to DART-battered Dimorphos

ended after it performed a close flyby of Dimorphos in the first minutes after the DART impact. The cubesat may be able to do more in the coming weeks, but with its two relatively basic cameras, there were always meant to be limitations.

"[Dimorphos] is a very low-gravity environment because it's very small," Patrick Michel, Hera principal investigator at Cote d’Azur University in France, said in the ESA news conference."Because the gravity is so small, the crater can take hours to form, so we need another spacecraft detective that comes on the site and gives us the final outcome details."

To gather these details, Hera will carry a lidar sensor to map the surface of the two asteroids with great precision, a thermal camera for analyzing the chemical properties of the surface and an optical camera to enable scientists to view the final impact crater and the untouched Didymos. On top of that, two cubesats, named Juventas and Milani, will accompany Hera on its mission, equipped with additional high-tech instruments.

Juventas will carry a special low-frequency radar instrument that will be able to peek inside the two asteroids and perform a detailed X-ray scan, according to ESA. Milani will analyze asteroid dust and make observations of the surface in near-infrared wavelengths. "It will be the first time that we will probe the internal properties and subsurface of an asteroid and chart [the characteristics] that influence the outcome of the impact," Michel said."We also hope to touch down on the surface of the asteroid with at least one of the two cubesats, and that will allow us to learn a lot."

Insurance assessment?

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