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.

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

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.

ESA's Hera spacecraft designed to assess NASA's experiment to deflect an asteroid has launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At 14:52 GMT, the robotic probe lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket to begin its three-year mission.

Hera, the Europe's ESA space mission to study a rogue asteroid that was deflected by NASA, kicks off in early October 2024.

Europe's Hera asteroid probe blasted off from Florida on a SpaceX rocket on Monday, beginning a two-year voyage to revisit an asteroid bashed off course by NASA's DART spacecraft in 2022.

The European Space Agency’s Hera mission will investigate an asteroid that NASA deliberately struck with another spacecraft in a previous test of humanity’s planetary defense readiness.

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.