The ESA spacecraft embarked on a two-year journey to the asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos on Monday.

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.

The news was a relief for Fitzsimmons and the entire Hera team.

The launch of another important mission, NASA's Europa Clipper, is on hold due to Hurricane Milton. Two years ago, a NASA spacecraft smashed into a small asteroid millions of miles from Earth to test a technique that could one day prove useful to deflect an object off a collision course with Earth.

SpaceX will launch Europe's Hera spacecraft on Monday (Oct. 7) toward the asteroid Dimorphos for a post-impact evaluation, and you can watch the liftoff live.

The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket captured amazing images of Earth Monday (Oct. 7) during the launch of Europa's Hera asteroid probe.

SpaceX launched the European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft on Monday to see a test NASA performed in 2022 to knock the moonlet off its orbit from an asteroid actually worked.

In humanity’s latest bid to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs, a European spacecraft soared away from the coast of Florida on Monday. The mission, Hera, will visit an asteroid that NASA deliberately struck with another spacecraft two years ago.