The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission, which is traveling to asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos as a follow-up to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, beat weather odds and successfully launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This flight, the 95th Falcon flight of 2024, was the first Falcon 9 mission to fly after the second stage deorbit burn anomaly that occurred during the Crew-9 mission on Sept. 28.
Hera launched on Monday, Oct. 7, at 10:52 AM EDT (14:52 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. With the formation of Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico, the weather forecast for launch had been 15 percent favorable, but the weather was acceptable at launch time.