Space Safety 27/10/2026 1119 views 11 likes

The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft for planetary defence has resolved its two target asteroids separately for the very first time, revealing the binary nature of the Didymos system, currently some 197 million km away from Earth.

Hera spacecraft with Asteroid Framing Camera facing front

Hera imaged Didymos and Dimorphos with its monochromatic Asteroid Framing Camera on the evening of Friday 18 October, at a distance of 1280 km away from the asteroid pair.

“With this image the smaller Dimorphos asteroid becomes visible for the first time,” explains Michael Kueppers. “Before this acquisition the spacecraft was still resolving the Didymos system as a single dot .…