SpaceX shared an awesome view of Earth captured during the early part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission, which launched on Monday.
The breathtaking image (below) shows part of the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket with Earth in the distance.
View from Falcon 9's second stage during the Hera mission pic.twitter.com/a4Qrgg6Pp6
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 7, 2024
SpaceX launched the Hera mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sending the spacecraft to an interplanetary transfer orbit.
Hera is a planetary defense mission that’s been designed to analyze the effects of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. DART reached its climax in September 2022 with the deliberate crashing of a spacecraft into an asteroid — Dimorphos — to see if the impact would alter its course. Scientists discovered that it did indeed change the asteroid’s direction, paving the way for further development of a system that could be used to deflect potentially hazardous asteroids spotted heading toward Earth.
The Hera mission will visit Dimorphos far away from Earth to gather further data to help scientists learn more about the composition of the asteroid and the effects of the DART mission. It could also lead to a greater understanding of asteroid geophysics, as well as offering further insight into the formation of our solar system.
This was the 23rd launch for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first-stage booster, which previously launched Crew-1, Crew-2, SXM-8, CRS-23, IXPE, Transporter-4, Transporter-5, Globalstar FM15, ISI EROS C-3, Korea 425, Maxar 1, ASBM, and 10 Starlink missions.
SpaceX said that due to the additional performance required to deliver Hera to its destination, the first-stage booster was not landed back on Earth in the usual way but instead expended in orbit.