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Dan Scheeres has been named a NASA participating scientist on the European Space Agencys Hera mission.

Scheeres, a distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of 12 individuals announced by NASA to join the space probe mission, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024.

Hera will study the binary asteroid system Didymos, including the moonlet Dimorphos, which was impacted by NASAs DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on Sept. 26, 2022. The objectives of DART and Hera collectively aim to validate the kinetic impact method as a technology to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, if one is ever discovered, and to learn more about the near-Earth asteroids that are the source of this natural hazard.

The Smead Department was heavily involved with the DART mission, and Hera is really the culmination of that project. My overall focus will be on interpreting the pictures we obtain of the Didymos binary asteroid system to better understand the orbit and spins of the two bodies about each other, and to understand what the surface environment is like, Scheeres said.

Scheeres is a National Academy of Engineering member, recognized for pioneering work on the motion of bodies in strongly perturbed environments such as near asteroids and comets.

Hera is scheduled to arrive at the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid system at the end of 2026, where it will gather otherwise unobtainable data about the mass and makeup of both bodies and assess the changes caused by the DART spacecrafts kinetic impact.

There are many aspects of this system that don't seem to make sense, so puzzling out these different issues will be an exciting and exhilarating experience, Scheeres said. The Hera mission will be able to take crucial measurements that will determine how effective the DART impact was in moving the secondary asteroid Dimorphos.

The goal of NASAs Hera Participating Scientist Program is to support scientists at U.S. institutions to participate on the Hera mission and address outstanding questions in planetary defense and near-Earth asteroid science. The participating scientists will become Hera science team members during their 5-year tenure with the mission.

DART was the first flight mission from NASAs Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which oversees the agencys ongoing efforts in planetary defense. International participation in DART and Hera, including the Hera Participating Scientist Program, has been enabled by an ongoing worldwide collaboration in the planetary defense research community known as the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment.

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Scheeres joins ESAs Hera asteroid mission | Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences - University of Colorado Boulder