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STORY: :: The European Space Agency is preparing to launch its first planetary defense mission:: File:: 'Hera' will assess a small moon, hit in previous experiment, to understand how it reacts to impact:: October 2, 2024:: Juan Luis Cano, ESA Planetary Defense Co-ordinator "In the last decades, we have understood that there is a threat in space. We have learnt that there are still lots of material that originated from the creation of the solar system that is still orbiting in orbits which are close to the earth. And we have started to discover them in great numbers. So, we have understood that there is a threat of asteroids falling to the earth and actually cause damage to our societies. So, we have to protect ourselves against that."Hera is part of the international Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), which in its first part saw NASA impact the small moon Dimorphos in the double-asteroid Didymos System during its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission.DART was the first time that humanity was able to alter the orbit of a celestial body, Ignacio Tanco, Hera Operation Manager at ESA told Reuters TV on Wednesday (October 2).However, the change in Dimorphos' orbit caused by DART's impact was greater than expected and to understand why, ESA will now have to take a look at the asteroid, Tanco said.According to ESA, the Hera spacecraft weighs roughly 2,383 lbs and is about the size of a small car. It carries eleven instruments, along with two deployable 'CubeSat' nano-satellites.Hera is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida between October 7 and 27, and is expected to reach the Didymos system by October 2026.