Hera will study whether humanity can deflect asteroids

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission launched this Monday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and headed toward the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits another larger asteroid, Didymos. Its goal is to analyze the consequences of the collision of the DART spacecraft with an asteroid in 2022 (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) from NASA and study asteroid deflection as a method of protecting our planet from possible impacts.

The launch is part of an international collaboration between NASA and ESA called AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment) and is ESA’s first planetary protection mission. Hera will arrive at Dimorphos at the end of 2026 and will conduct a detailed study after the ship’s controlled collision with this asteroid with a diameter of about 150 meters, which was the first object in the solar system whose orbit around the main body was changed by human activity.

Hera’s goal now is to gather important missing data to prove that kinetic deflection is a reliable method of planetary defense. To reach its destination, Sinc reports, the spacecraft will have to perform a gravity maneuver on Mars in 2025 to accelerate to its final destination, where it will find out how effective the DART impact was, which will help better understand the physics of this impact or the internal properties of asteroids. according to Michael Kuppers, an ESA scientist involved in the project.

With the help of two cubesat

The Hera probe’s observations will culminate in the placement of a pair of small satellites or cubesat the size of a shoebox, Milani will record spectral data from the surface, and Juventas will conduct the first radar surveys ever conducted on an asteroid.

By gathering information about the mass, composition, and crater that DART left on Dimorphos, scientists will be able to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the distraction technique used. Hera’s data will allow for the first time to test or refine asteroid-scale impact models, leaving this planetary defense technique ready for use.

Data from Hera, named after the Greek goddess of marriage, will allow numerical models of impacts at the asteroid scale to be tested or refined for the first time, thus leaving this planetary defense technique ready for use should the need to protect a planet ever arise. Earth.

The asteroid system that will be analyzed is a prototype of thousands of others that could pose a collision risk with our planet. If the 150-meter asteroid known as city ​​killer (city killers) – can wipe out a city like Madrid, although according to Tanco it is not big enough to affect the entire country.

Spanish participation

The Hera spacecraft, with a dozen instruments, had a budget of 363 million euros. It was built by the space and technology group OHB in Germany with the participation of 18 European countries and Japan.

The Spanish company GMV led an international consortium to develop the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) system, which includes part of the analysis of the Hera rendezvous operations and cubesat Juventas. The EMXYS company took part in the electronics of the latter gravimeter. For its part, SENER produced the low-gain antennas, and Thales Alenia Space Spain developed the flight communications subsystems.