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Testing the equipment on an interstellar mission is one of the first things operators do when the spacecraft successfully launches. In some cases, those tests show the future troubles the mission will face, such as what happened to NASA’s Lucy mission a few years ago. However, in some cases, the mission provides us with perspectives we might never have seen before, which was the case for Hera, ESA’s mission to Dimorphos. This asteroid was deflected successfully during NASA’s DART test in 2022.

Hera was successfully launched on October 7th and carries a series of instruments designed to peer at the asteroids using different wavelengths. Some instruments were turned toward the Earth and Moon from about a million km away as part of the mission’s Near-Earth Commissioning Phase. The resulting pictures showcase the spacecraft’s capabilities and provide a new perspective of our “terraqueous globe,” as Carl Sagan once put it, and our much more sterile neighbor.

First, we have an image from the Asteroid Framing Camera or AFC. Technically comprised of two cameras (for redundancy, as so many space missions do), this monochrome 1020×1020 image is the clearest of the three released by ESA as part of a press release. It gives a sense of the scale of the distance between the Earth and the Moon, which can be hard to judge when down on the planet’s surface.

Image of the Earth (left) and Moon from Hera’s AFC.
Credit – ESA

Next up is the Thermal Infrared Imager, or TIRI. This one was taken slightly closer, at 1.4 million kilometers away (about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon itself). TIRI is designed to capture infrared wavelengths of light – which we usually think of as heat. Watching Dimorphos over time will allow it to understand the “thermal inertia” of certain regions, which scientists can use to discern some important physical properties of the asteroid. While not the most exciting space image ever captured, the successful operation of this sensitive instrument is critical to the mission.

Image of the Earth (center) and Moon from Hera’s TIRI.
Credit – ESA

Finally, there’s Hyperscout H. It, too, is designed to capture Dimorphos in wavelengths that humans can’t visibly see – in this case, 650 nm to 950 nm wavelengths, which is considered “near infrared” as compared to the “mid-infrared” capabilities of TIRI. Also, this imager comes with its own false color depiction, showing “shorter” wavelengths, which are closer to our visible spectrum, as shades of blue, whereas “reds” represent wavelengths farther away from visible light. 

Image of Earth (bottom left) and Moon from Hera’s Hyperscout H imager.
Credit – ESA

The Earth and Moon have been imaged most likely millions of times in these wavelengths before, so it’s unlikely that any science will be gleaned from these images. Still, these images are invaluable as proof of concept for the operation of the systems. The three cameras comprise some of the essential parts of Hera’s “asteroid deck,” which houses most of the spacecraft’s other instruments, including two CubeSat deployers, a laser rangefinder, and antennas for deep-space communication with Earth. Many of those different instruments will have to wait until “show time” when the craft arrives at the binary asteroid system in December 2026. Hopefully, we will also receive plenty more images from the three systems covered here.

Learn More:
ESA – Hera’s first images offer parting glimpse of Earth and Moon
UT – Hera Probe Heads Off to See Aftermath of DART’s Asteroid Impact
UT – ESA’s Hera Mission is Bringing Two Cubesats Along. They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos
UT – The Smallest Radar Ever Sent to Space Will Probe the Interior of Dimorphos After its Impact From DART

Lead Image:
Image of Earth from the AFC
Credit – ESA

The post Hera Says Farewell to the Earth and Moon appeared first on Universe Today.

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From some place I can’t recall I learned about a site called Ad Fontes Media, which has a figure called an  Interactive Media Bias Chart that looks like this (click to enlarge):

On the X axis various sources are ranked for political bias, with “left” sources on the left (of course) and right-wing sources to the right. On the Y axis is a measure of credibility, with low scores on the bottom and high scores on the top.  You’ll want to know how the rankings are done, and you can see that on this page. (You can also get digital downloads, which are free for educational, personal, and nonprofit use.)

You’ll want to enlarge the chart at the original site and see how your media sources rank. You can also search for a given media source (including television and other digital media).

The source with the most balanced coverage and also the most reliable appears to be USAFacts, to which you must subscribe (I ahven’t heard of it or seen it).  The CBS Evening News and the Wall Street Journal are also given as credible centrist sources.

The politically extreme sources tend to be less credible, and that’s understandable, of course, for they slant the news.  Among left-leaning and less credible sources are the PBS News Hour (surprise), but, even worse: Jezebel, and Jen Psaki on NBC. Then the left-wing sources go even more downhill to sites like Wonkette and the Tony Michaels Podcast.

Not credible right-wing sources include The Post Millenial and Fox and Friends, and, even more extreme and less credible (and not surprising) are Louder with Crowder and, of course, Alex Jones.

Scores are based on panels of three people rating individual articles, and I can’t seem to find an overall score for places like the New York Times, but here’s their chart, showing a left skew and moderate credibility (each dot is an article)

The Wall Street Journal shows, as indicated above, more centrist and credible news:

Reuters is left-centrist and pretty reliable:

The Washington Post, like the NYT, is also skewed left and not terribly credible:

I haven’t examined the methodology or overall scores for each source, but I’ll let readers do that for themselves. Anyway, it’s fun to play around with and see where your own news sources fall.

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