HERA's role will be to characterize the asteroids system after the impact and obtain data of incalculable value that will make it possible to develop strategies to handle an eventual impact on Earth. To this end, NASA will send a first spaceship called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), which will crash into the secondary asteroid Didymoon, in order to study how an asteroid could be deflected if it were on a collision course with Earth. The mission's main objective is to develop planetary defence technologies. This system is composed of a main asteroid (Didymain) and another asteroid that orbits around it (Didymoon). 5) 6)īased on the heritage of the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) project, HERA aims to be the first interplanetary mission that visits a binary asteroid system, Didymos. The HERA mission is run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and led by OHB-System AG. The technological multinational GMV (Madrid, Spain) leads an international consortium entrusted with designing the analysis of the HERA mission and developing its GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) System. The 780 m-diameter mountain-sized main body is orbited by a 160 m moon, informally called ‘ Didymoon’, about the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza. While doing so, Hera will also demonstrate multiple novel technologies, such as autonomous navigation around the asteroid – like modern driverless cars on Earth, and gather crucial scientific data, to help scientists and future mission planners better understand asteroid compositions and structures.ĭue to launch in 2023, Hera would travel to a binary asteroid system – the Didymos pair of near-Earth asteroids.
NASA will first perform a kinetic impact on the smaller of the two bodies, then Hera will follow-up with a detailed post-impact survey that will turn this grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and repeatable planetary defence technique.
Hera is the European contribution to an international AIDA (Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment) cooperation, the first planetary defense mission. Hera – named after the Greek goddess of marriage – is an ESA mission that will be humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% of all known asteroids.
Hera - the asteroid deflection mission of ESA Spacecraft Launch Development Status Sensor Complement References
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