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TThe European Space Agency has awarded a contract of 129 million euros (118 million pounds sterling) to the German space company OHB. The agreement covers the design, manufacture and testing of Hera, ESA’s first planetary defense mission.
Hera is the European contribution to an experiment called asteroid impact and deflection assessment. The other component is NASA’s double asteroid redirection test (Dart). Both spacecraft are designed to visit the double asteroid Didymos.
The main asteroid is 780 meters in diameter and is orbited by a small moon, Dimorphos, which is 160 meters in diameter, or about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The dart will arrive in September 2022. Traveling at high speed, it will fly headlong towards Dimorphos to alter the moon’s orbit by a small amount.
Hera will launch in 2024 and arrive in 2026 to conduct at least six months of observations to better understand Didymos and Dimorphos and how the impact has affected the moon.
Hera will operate an automated guidance, navigation and control system, developed by ESA, that turns the spacecraft into the equivalent of a driverless car. It will also deploy two miniature satellites being developed by other companies, Juventas and the Asteroid Prospection Explorer, to aid its research.
