Members of Hera’s testing team prepare for electromagnetic compatibility testing during the mission’s pre-flight test campaign at ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Hera is ESA’s first mission for planetary defence. Due for launch in October 2024, Hera will fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system in deep space to perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos moonlet in orbit around the primary body. The Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos is already historic, as the first Solar System object to have its orbit changed by human activity, by the 2022 impact of NASA’s DART mission.

Hera is intended to gather crucial missing data about Dimorphos for scientists, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. To increase its yield of data, Hera carries with it ESA’s first deep space CubeSats, carrying additional instruments and planned to fly closer to the asteroid’s surface than the main spacecraft, before eventually landing.

Part of Hera’s testing was documented for the spacecraft team by photographer Max Alexander, who specialises in science communication through photography.

Credits: Max Alexander/ESA

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Fisheye view of the Hera spacecraft during its pre-flight test campaign at ESA’s ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Hera is ESA’s first mission for planetary defence. Due for launch in October 2024, Hera will fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system in deep space to perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos moonlet in orbit around the primary body. The Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos is already historic, as the first Solar System object to have its orbit changed by human activity, by the 2022 impact of NASA’s DART mission.

Hera is intended to gather crucial missing data about Dimorphos for scientists, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. To increase its yield of data, Hera carries with it ESA’s first deep space CubeSats, carrying additional instruments and planned to fly closer to the asteroid’s surface than the main spacecraft, before eventually landing.

Part of Hera’s testing was documented for the spacecraft team by photographer Max Alexander, who specialises in science communication through photography.

Credits: Max Alexander/ESA

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency Space Universe Cosmos Space Science Science Space Technology Tech Technology Hera In The Clean Room NOORDWIJK The Netherlands ESTEC European Space Technology Centre European Space Technology and Research Centre Engineering

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Hera’s shoebox-sized Juventas CubeSat seen during pre-flight test campaign at ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Juventas carries a radar to perform the first subsurface probe of an asteroid. The round disk seen on the side of the CubeSat is the inter-satellite link each CubeSat will use to communicate with Hera and each other.

Hera is ESA’s first mission for planetary defence. Due for launch in October 2024, Hera will fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system in deep space to perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos moonlet in orbit around the primary body. The Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos is already historic, as the first Solar System object to have its orbit changed by human activity, by the 2022 impact of NASA’s DART mission.

Hera is intended to gather crucial missing data about Dimorphos for scientists, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. To increase its yield of data, Hera carries with it ESA’s first deep space CubeSats, carrying additional instruments and planned to fly closer to the asteroid’s surface than the main spacecraft, before eventually landing.

Part of Hera’s testing was documented for the spacecraft team by photographer Max Alexander, who specialises in science communication through photography.

Credits: Max Alexander/ESA

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency Space Universe Cosmos Space Science Science Space Technology Tech Technology Hera In The Clean Room NOORDWIJK The Netherlands ESTEC European Space Technology Centre European Space Technology and Research Centre Engineering

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The team overseeing ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence pose with the spacecraft behind them in its ESTEC Test Centre cleanroom in the Netherlands.

They are joined in this photo by representatives from Tyvak International in Italy and GomSpace in Luxembourg – makers of the Milani and Juventas CubeSats respectively, which will join Hera on its journey into deep space – as well as Cheryl Reed of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University in the US – seen in the centre – who served as programme manager of NASA’s predecessor planetary defence mission DART (Double Asteroid Redirect Test).

Also represented is ISISpace in the Netherlands, manufacturer of the Deep Space Deployers that will store the miniature CubeSats during their journey to Didymos and deploy them upon arrival.

Hera and DART were conceived together and implemented as the international Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) international collaboration. Both missions are supported by a common community of planetary scientists.

On 26 September 2022 the van-sized DART spacecraft impacted the Dimorphos asteroid at around 6.1 km/s. This first test of the ‘kinetic impact’ method of planetary defence succeeded in modifying the orbit of the target asteroid around the larger Didymos body.

This October Hera will commence a two-year odyssey to the Didymos binary asteroid system to perform a close-up asteroid survey, gathering crucial missing information to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique.

Credits: ESA

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency Space Universe Cosmos Space Science Science Space Technology Tech Technology Hera DART Engineering ESTEC European Space Technology and Research Centre Netherlands The Netherlands In The Clean Room

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A technician works on the underside of the Hera spacecraft during its pre-flight test campaign at ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

Hera is ESA’s first mission for planetary defence. Due for launch in October 2024, Hera will fly to the Didymos binary asteroid system in deep space to perform a close-up survey of the Dimorphos moonlet in orbit around the primary body. The Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos is already historic, as the first Solar System object to have its orbit changed by human activity, by the 2022 impact of NASA’s DART mission.

Hera is intended to gather crucial missing data about Dimorphos for scientists, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. To increase its yield of data, Hera carries with it ESA’s first deep space CubeSats, carrying additional instruments and planned to fly closer to the asteroid’s surface than the main spacecraft, before eventually landing.

Part of Hera’s testing was documented for the spacecraft team by photographer Max Alexander, who specialises in science communication through photography.

Credits: Max Alexander/ESA

Tags:   ESA European Space Agency Space Universe Cosmos Space Science Science Space Technology Tech Technology Hera In The Clean Room NOORDWIJK The Netherlands ESTEC European Space Technology Centre European Space Technology and Research Centre Engineering

© All Rights Reserved