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\t\t\t\t\t\t08\/07\/2026<\/span> Operating across 140 million km of space, the control team for ESA\u2019s Hera mission have succeeded in upgrading the software running it, leaving the spacecraft ready to explore the distant Dimorphos and Didymos asteroids this autumn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Imagine being tasked to install new software onto a multi-million-euro computer, sight unseen. You don\u2019t get to touch the hardware\u00a0in question because it is already busy overseeing a spacecraft in deep space, in onward motion at more than 12 km per second.<\/p>\n Instead you send instructions by text message, relayed via 35-m diameter communication antennas directed at precisely the right patch of sky, working around a nearly eight-minute one-way signal delay due to the inherent distance involved.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Having uploaded the software successfully, then comes the crucial phase when the entire spacecraft needs to be rebooted \u2013 twice!<\/p>\n Hera\u2019s onboard computer, overseeing all its instruments and subsystems, runs on parallel processor streams for redundancy. A pair of reboots allowed each to be evaluated in turn. The seven-strong core Hera team stood ready in their control room in case the spacecraft did not signal back as scheduled, but thankfully it rebooted nominally on each occasion,\u00a0right on time.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cThe success of this more that two week operation leaves Hera finally ready for what we call its \u2018asteroid phase\u2019,\u201d says Anna Schiavo, Hera Spacecraft Operations Engineer. \u201cThe update will allow us to commission all of the spacecraft\u2019s remaining instruments and to use\u00a0 the autonomous functionality that Hera will rely on to navigate around its target asteroids \u2013 along with the inter-satellite links Hera will employ to communicate with the two CubeSats it will deploy early next year.\u201d<\/p>\n Before being applied in flight the software underwent one of the most complicated test campaigns ever undertaken at ESA\u2019s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Occurring over a year and a half and requiring 50 ground test days in all, this involved rehearsing all Hera\u2019s autonomous functionality around its two target asteroids and also interactions with its CubeSats.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Sylvain Lodiot, heading ESA\u2019s Outer Solar System and Planetary Defence Operations, explains: \u201cThe testing involved running the software on a functional replica of Hera located at the mission\u2019s prime contractor OHB\u00a0in Bremen, called the \u2018Bench\u2019, flying around simulated models of the asteroids and communicating with actual CubeSat replicas though the inter-satellite links.\u201d<\/p>\n Caglayan Guerbuez, Hera Spacecraft Operations Manager.: \u201cIt\u2019s not so unusual that a deep space mission is launched without its final software aboard, but Hera was really a mission in a hurry:\u00a0it had to launch when it did in October 2024\u00a0in order to benefit from a flyby past Mars the following spring, otherwise the mission would have taken years longer to reach Dimorphos.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cSo we have been kept busy during the cruise phase to catch up, with the valued support of software provider Spacebel\u00a0as well as OHB.\u201d<\/p>\n Hera is ESA\u2019s first planetary defence mission. The van-sized spacecraft is headed to the Dimorphos asteroid, which orbits in turn around the larger Didymos asteroid. Dimorphos is already historic as the first object in the Solar System to have had its orbit changed by human action \u2013 when NASA\u2019s DART spacecraft impacted it in September 2022.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n DART\u2019s impact caused a brightening visible from distant Earth telescopes, but nobody knows what it did to Dimorphos itself. Hera is going there to perform a close-up crash site survey, to help turn DART\u2019s kinetic impact experiment into a well understood planetary defence that might be tailored against incoming objects if required.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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