Async Loading Soft Object References, Does it check if the asset is already loaded in memory? Or will it load the same asset more than once?

Let’s say I have a Soft Object Reference and I load it using ‘Async Load Asset’ node.
Now If I load the same Reference again using the same node, will it load the same asset twice in the memory? Or will it stop because the asset is already loaded?
I’m concerned about unknowingly loading soft references many times, which might take up memory by loading the same asset again and again.

Hard references will have just a single instance in memory. all references of same asset are pointers (point to the same place in memory where the actual asset is allocated). What Soft reference does is just keep a ‘link’ of the asset without loading it in memory until you call it with Async Load. Once you doit you just turned your ‘link’ into an actual object in memory (turned soft into hard)…if you run the assync loading again should not do anything as the engine loaded it already and has the Hard version resolved (pointer)

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