ESA’s Planetary Defense Mission: Hera Asteroid Spacecraft Is Complete
ESA’s asteroid defense mission, Hera, has been successfully assembled at OHB Bremen in Germany. Hera is complete. ESA’s asteroid mission for planetary defense was built…
Hera News
The Hera mission, developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), is an ambitious planetary defense initiative designed to assess and validate techniques to deflect asteroids that could potentially threaten Earth. Working in tandem with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, Hera aims to closely analyze the aftermath of DART’s collision with Dimorphos, a moonlet of the Didymos asteroid. Scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, Hera will study the impact crater, measure Dimorphos’ mass, and survey its composition and orbit changes post-impact. This mission is critical in testing whether kinetic impact could be an effective strategy for asteroid deflection, providing key insights into the mitigation of asteroid collision risks.
ESA’s Hera Mission: Mini-Radar Will Probe Asteroid’s Heart
ESA’s Juventas CubeSat will house the smallest space radar, JuRa, for the Hera mission, aiming to image inside the asteroid Dimorphos. Developed by IPAG and…
ESA’s Planetary Defense Mission: Time of Trial for Hera Spacecraft
One of last year’s space highlights was the NASA DART mission’s collision with Dimorphos (seen right in the animation above), the small moon of the binary…
Catching DART Asteroid Deflection Mission’s First Words
When NASA’s DART spacecraft launched November 24 on a world-first mission to deflect an asteroid, ESA’s Estrack network played a vital role – finding, tracking,…
Hera Team Congratulates Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Hayabusa2’s Asteroid Sample Return
The team behind ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defense congratulates JAXA for returning Hayabusa2’s capsule to Earth laden with pristine asteroid samples. They look…
ESA’s Ambitious Hera Planetary Defense Mission Awards $153 Million Contract
Today ESA awarded a €129.4 million (US $153.4 million) contract covering the detailed design, manufacturing, and testing of Hera, the Agency’s first mission for planetary…