Hera Mission spacecraft, illustration
Illustration of ESA's Hera Mission spacecraft at its target, the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos. Hera is part of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission along with NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft. DART launched in November 2021 and is scheduled to impact a moon of Didymos in September 2022. It is a test of whether such an impact would deflect an asteroid heading towards Earth. HERA will launch in October 2024 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026. It will study the crater caused by the impact of the DART spacecraft. The Hera mission includes two CubeSat Opportunity Payloads (COPINS, right) to aid the mission and demonstrate inter-satellite link techniques.
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Photo credit: © EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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