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IMAGE: The inter-satellite link between Hera and her two CubeSats near the Didymos asteroid system plus
Credit: ESA
After contributing to the Rosetta Mission, in 2024, the Politecnico di Milano will return to deep space. That year, ESA, the European Space Agency, will launch the Hera spacecraft towards the binary asteroid Didymos, the smallest object ever visited by a space mission: an asteroid approximately 780 meters in diameter, with a tiny Dimorphos moon of approximately 160 meters. After her arrival, Hera will launch two shoebox-sized satellites, namely CubeSats.
The Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of the Politecnico di Milano is part of the industrial team selected by ESA to develop the “CubeSat Milani” on board the Hera. The team, led by Prof. Francesco Topputo, will be responsible for the design of the trajectory of the CubeSat and its GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) system.
The use of CubeSats in such a mission is extremely ambitious and is a fundamental step towards the future development of low-cost exploration of the Solar System, but one that provides high scientific and technological performance. For the first time in the history of space exploration, CubeSats will be able to operate autonomously, more than 10 million kilometers from Earth, in the still unexplored and largely unknown binary asteroid environment. From a scientific point of view, the CubeSat will provide invaluable information on the physical and dynamic properties of Didymos and Dimorphos. The binary system will be investigated by collecting data and close-up images near the surface of the two asteroids. The CubeSat Milani will provide a fundamental contribution to the broader science objectives of the Hera mission. It will act as the building block for the first interplanetary inter-satellite communication link between Hera and her two CubeSats (figure). The CubeSat will act as a technology demonstrator and test innovative GNC algorithms for the first time, to support the autonomous guidance, navigation and control of the CubeSat in deep space. The impossibility of having direct communication with the ground station, but only through retransmissions with Hera, and its limited propulsion capacity, make the Second CubeSat aboard Hera one of the most interesting technological challenges of the coming years.
Hera is the European contribution to the joint mission of ESA and NASA AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment), which will be the first planetary defense mission. Its objective is to test and validate the planetary defense technique called “kinetic impactor”, which consists of deflecting the orbital trajectory of an asteroid by means of a high-speed impact.
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