This is what the Earth looks like from deep space, about 2,000,000 million kilometers away

The ESA has published as seen Earth from space deep through the various spectral bands of the HyperScout H instrument of the Hera mission.

Hera’s HyperScout H is a hyperspectral imager that views its targets in more colors than the human eye can distinguish, across 25 spectral bands ranging from the visible to near-infrared wavelength range of 650 to 950nm. These close-up Earth images were produced by separating these wavelengths to show how the instrument works in practice, as observed on October 11 between 01:59 and 18:09 UTC.

False color images are displayed using the TwilightShifted ‘palette’: a color map ranging from blue-black to purplish-white to reddish-black to represent light intensity levels.

“This allows us to observe cloud patterns on our planet from a distance of almost 2,000,000 million kilometers and test the accuracy of our data processing algorithms,” Marcel Popescu, a member of the instrument team at the NASA, said in a statement. University of Craiova in Romania.

After a successful launch on October 7, 2024, Hera’s instruments were activated for the first time as part of the spacecraft’s ongoing near-Earth commissioning phase.

On Thursday, October 10 and Friday, October 11, Hera’s upper asteroid deck, which houses the spacecraft’s instruments, headed toward our planet so its instruments could capture their first images of Earth and the Moon at a distance of more than a million kilometers.

“Once Hera reaches the asteroid Dimorphos, HyperScout H will explore its mineral composition,” explains the instrument’s principal investigator Julia de León from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. “This first calibration test was an exciting experience, demonstrating that both the instrument and its data processing chain are working well.”

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The shoebox-sized HyperScout H is the latest in a family of HyperScout imagers that have already flown in Earth orbit for Earth observation, produced by cosine Remote Sensing in the Netherlands with support from the ESA.

Next March, HyperScout H will also be among the Hera instruments used on Mars and the Martian moon Deimos, as the mission makes a close approach to the Red Planet.

Hera is ESA’s first planetary defense mission, heading to visit the first asteroid whose orbit has been altered by human action. By collecting up-close data on the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a well-understood and potentially repeatable technique.