![]() ![]() ![]() Its optimized design has benefited from multiple ESA studies of asteroid missions across the last two decades, most recently the proposed Asteroid Impact Mission. Hera is a small spacecraft for deep space possessing comparable autonomy to a self-driving car. Within GMV alone, the HERA team is made up of 20 professionals who for 12 months will be entrusted with developing the technology required to handle the spaceship.įigure 3: Overview of past missions to small body targets, asteroids and comets (image credit: The Planetary Society, ESA) 8) ![]() GMV's role in the mission: The consortium is composed of four companies in the GMV group (Spain, Romania, Poland and Portugal), OHB-SWE and Spinworks. "It is of fundamental importance that the space sector emphasizes asteroid missions, both in order to be able to react to possible impacts on our planet and to strengthen the scientific knowledge of our universe and develop innovative technologies for planetary protection," states Mariella Graziano, Executive Director of Space Systems and Robotics at GMV. Asteroids, small moons, and comets are not only dangerous objects wandering the Solar System, but also possibly the most interesting objects that can be visited.Īll these celestial bodies are replicas of the primitive Solar System, since they were formed in the very early stages of its development and have remained unchanged, which means that there is an inconceivable amount of scientific information to be gathered. This mission would place Europe once again as the vanguard of planetary exploration, science and technology, repeating Rosetta's great success.īut planetary defence is not the only purpose of the mission - scientific development and the research of the origins of the Solar System is another of the main pillars of the HERA mission. 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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