The Hera spacecraft is fully assembled. The European Space Agency’s mission will visit Didymos and Dimorphos to study the after-effects of the DART mission’s impact on Dimorphos in 2022, which modified the asteroid moonlet’s orbit around its parent asteroid Didymos and sent a plume of debris thousands of kilometers out into space. Hera is now fully assembled and is on track to launch in October 2024. Pictured: An artist’s impression of Hera and the two smallsats it will deploy at Dimorphos. Image credit: ESA.

India has launched a mission to study the Sun. Following the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon, the Indian Space Research Organization has launched another exploration mission, this time to the Sun. Aditya-L1 will study the Sun’s upper atmosphere, coronal mass ejections, solar wind and magnetic fields, as well as other phenomena.