Margherita Cardi, Milani Programme Manager at Tyvak International, enthusiastically shares with us a behind-the-scenes look at the CubeSat named after Andrea Milani: the first scientist to propose a two-part mission involving an impactor craft to strike an asteroid followed up by a reconnaissance mission to gather data for a scientific study. Cardi explains why Milani, and the other CubeSat Juventas, can take more risks and get closer to the asteroid than Hera.
Hera is ESA’s first planetary defence mission, heading to a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System. On 26 September 2022 NASA’s DART mission performed humankind’s first test of asteroid deflection by crashing into the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet. The result was a shift in its orbit around the mountain-sized Didymos main asteroid.
Now comes ESA’s own contribution to this international collaboration: the Hera mission will revisit Dimorphos to gather vital close-up data about the deflected body.
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