Explore and Protect

Hera Mission

Hera is a planetary defence mission under development at the European Space Agency (ESA) - launching in October 2024. Its objectives are to investigate the Didymos binary asteroid, including the very first assessment of its internal properties, and to measure in great detail the outcome of NASA's DART mission kinetic impactor test. Hera will provide extremely valuable information for future asteroid deflection missions and science; increasing our understanding of asteroid geophysics as well as solar system formation and evolutionary processes. 

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History

ESA has been a pioneer in the study of space missions devoted to testing an asteroid deflection technique, starting in 2002 with 6 concept studies based on planetary defence followed by the creation of the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel (NEOMAP) who recommended the study of the Don Quijote concept. This concept involved two spacecraft, one serving as a hyper-velocity impactor to deflect a small asteroid, the other serving as an orbiter to measure the outcome and momentum transfer efficiency of the impact of the first spacecraft. A Phase A/B1 study by European industries of this concept was performed until 2007, which paved the way to what would then become two missions: DART and Hera. They are respectively developed by NASA and ESA, with the support of the AIDA international collaboration of scientists.

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AIDA collaboration

Planetary Defence is an International Effort

 

The main purpose of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration is to support the demonstration and validation of the technology needed to deflect a hazardous asteroid by means of a kinetic impactor as well as to improve our understanding of the impact process and the momentum transfer to the target asteroid. AIDA will combine the data obtained by the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will impact the secondary of the binary asteroid Didymos, named Dimorphos, and observe the resulting change in the orbital period of the secondary from ground-based observatories, and by the ESA Hera mission, which will rendezvous with the target, characterise it in great details, including its internal properties and the crater made by DART and measure the momentum transfer efficiency. An Italian Cubesat called LiciaCube will be deployed by DART before the impact and will observe its happening as well as the first 100 seconds following it. In addition to the remote sensing suite of instruments, Hera will also deploy two Cubesats, Milani and Juventas, which will operate over a few months in vicinity of the asteroid providing unique scientific measurements.

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