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\t\t\t\t\t\t02\/09\/2024<\/span> After a year of testing, ESA\u2019s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence\u00a0is about to depart Europe and head towards its launch site in the USA. The Hera team looked on as the crated spacecraft \u2013 along with its twin miniature CubeSats and additional equipment \u2013 was driven away from ESA\u2019s ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Following its lift-off this October, after a two-year cruise through space,\u00a0Hera\u00a0will rendezvous with the Didymos binary asteroid system: the Dimorphos moonlet, about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, is in orbit about 1.2 km away from the mountain-sized Didymos main body.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Hera will investigate the altered nature of Dimorphos due to NASA\u2019s\u00a0DART\u00a0spacecraft impacting it and shifting its orbit in September 2022. The data returned by Hera will turn this \u2018kinetic impact\u2019 method into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence method.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThis is an emotional moment, after a year of intense testing activity,\u201d comments Paolo Martino, ESA\u2019s lead Hera system engineer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like a huge accomplishment to have finally concluded the test process because there is always a lot of tension involved in testing, you never be quite sure everything will go to plan. But the best is yet to come, in the shape of the launch itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The trio of spacecraft were transported overnight to Cologne airport in Germany, where they will be flown to Cape Canaveral in the USA this evening for launch by Space X Falcon 9 in early October.<\/p>\n ESA\u2019s Hera team witnessed the car-sized spacecraft\u2019s departure along with personnel from European Test Services and prime contractor OHB.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Paolo adds: \u201cAll of us have been working day and night together since the spacecraft got here in August 2023. To make sure we made the tight schedule every moment had to count, and that meant there were no holidays, no nights off or free weekends. Some of the OHB team have had to spend the whole of the last year away from home.”<\/p>\n \u201cThen there have been essential contributions from the companies making our two CubeSats \u2013 Tyvak in Italy producing the Milani mineral prospector and Gomspace in Luxembourg responsible for the Juventas radar mapper.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019d also highlight the work of GMV\u00a0for the mission\u2019s guidance, navigation and control, OHB Italy for overseeing Hera\u2019s power system, Beyond Gravity for the solar arrays and FHP to dress the spacecraft in its multi-layer insulation, among many others. It has taken a lot of combined effort to reach this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n The accelerated schedule of the whole mission \u2013 from contract signing to ready for launch into deep space in only four years \u2013 meant that the standard testing simulating the launch and space environments were combined with functional and software testing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Hera\u2019s last week at ESTEC saw the team packing the Hera spacecraft while completing essential paperwork for shipment \u2013 complicated by the fact that while the mission\u2019s supporting equipment will eventually be returned from the USA, Hera and the CubeSats will not.<\/p>\n From this point ESA\u2019s Hera team will be divided. Some will accompany the spacecraft at Cape Canaveral to perform final dry runs and functional tests, while the rest will head to ESA\u2019s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where they will assist in Hera\u2019s launch and early operations.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Hera mission manager Ian Carnelli will briefly bid farewell to Hera tonight as it is flown across the Atlantic Ocean aboard a gargantuan Antonov An-124 to Cape Canaveral: \u201cThis is a significant departure because the very first version of what would later become the Hera spacecraft was worked on here at ESTEC, at our Concurrent Design Facility, nearly two decades ago. It started life as an observer spacecraft called ‘Sancho’ that was to complement an asteroid impactor spacecraft\u00a0\u2018Hidalgo\u2019 in\u00a0ESA\u2019s Don Quijote mission concept, which ended up becoming NASA\u2019s DART.”<\/p>\n “It\u2019s been a long journey, but Hera is almost ready to make history!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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