The Hera mission will investigate the result of NASA’s asteroid redirection test, in which the U.S. agency rammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos.

A NASA spacecraft knocked into an asteroid two years ago to test planetary defense. Now, a new mission will inspect the damage, with the goal of helping future asteroid deflection.

Dodging stormy weather ahead of Hurricane Milton, SpaceX launched the European Space Agency's $398 million Hera probe Monday on a follow-up flight to find out precisely how a moonlet orbiting a small asteroid was affected by the high-speed impact of NASA's DART probe in 2022.