The Hera spacecraft before encapsulation for launch. Photo: ESA

SpaceX launched the Hera planetary defense mission for the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday morning. A Falcon 9 rocket launched the mission to interplanetary transfer orbit, lifting off at 10:52 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. 

The mission took place despite the fact that the Falcon 9 is currently grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the third time in three months after an anomaly with the second stage on a recent crew mission for NASA. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared Falcon 9 to launch the Hera mission because this mission did not involve a second stage reentry, Reuters reported. 

ESA confirmed after the mission that the spacecraft’s solar sails successfully deployed. 

Hera is the first planetary defense mission for ESA. The spacecraft is now on its way to carry out the first detailed survey of a double-body asteroid, Didymos, which is orbited by a smaller body, Dimorphos. According to ESA, the Dimorphos asteroid will be the smallest body visited by a space mission. 

Hera will deploy two onboard cubesats to fly closer to the target asteroid. The Milani cubesat developed for ESA by Italian industry led by Tyvak International, will survey the mineral makeup of Dimorphos and its surrounding dust, while the Juventas cubesat produced by a Luxembourg-led consortium under GOMspace, will perform the first subsurface radar probe of an asteroid. 

“By the end of Hera’s mission, the Didymos pair should become the best studied asteroids in history, helping to secure Earth from the threat of incoming asteroids,” commented ESA Hera mission scientist Michael Kueppers. 

Around 100 European companies were involved in designing the Hera mission in a consortium led by OHB System AG.