The Hera mission will be humanity’s first mission to a binary asteroid: the 800 m diameter Didymos is accompanied by a 170 m diameter secondary body. Hera will study the consequences of the impact caused by NASA’s DART spacecraft on the smaller body. Credit – ESA – Science Office
Meet Hera, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) own asteroid detective. Hera, along with her two CubeSats, is about to embark on a not-so-amazing adventure.
The two CubeSats, Milani, the rock decoder, and Juventas, the radar visionary, travel with Hera on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to the planet land
In this episode of “The Incredible Adventures of Hera”, you will be taken on a fun and informative journey to visit Didymos along with Hera. Along the way, you’ll discover who the main characters are, why this mission is so important, what the ESA hopes to accomplish with Hera, and more.
Before you begin your incredible adventure with Hera, we should explain that ESA’s Hera mission is a planetary defense mission to a near-Earth binary asteroid system.
This mission is carried out by ESA, in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). JAXA is contributing thermal imaging and its extensive knowledge of asteroid science, through the legacy of Hayabusa2.
Along with NASA’s DART mission, the technology needed for planetary defense will be demonstrated, so this is a very exciting adventure.
What are asteroids?
Asteroids are primitive bodies that preserve clues about the formation and evolution of the Solar System. The sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1 meter rocks to a dwarf planet nearly 1000 km (600 miles) in diameter; they are metallic or rocky bodies without an atmosphere.
So how do you pick an asteroid out of thousands for a space mission? NASA made that difficult choice with its Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), which aims to land a spacecraft on the moon Dimorphos on September 27.
Choosing the right target was essential to doing science right. NASA and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Research Laboratory, which are working together on the mission, said there were a few things that made the binary asteroid system ideal for this critical mission.
“The Didymos system is an eclipsing binary, meaning that from our vantage point on Earth, Dimorphos regularly passes in front of and behind Didymos as it orbits,” JHUAPL officials wrote in a DART fact sheet .
The test location is also ideal because the two asteroids pose no threat to our planet, mission team members noted. Also, the Didymos system is only 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, meaning the spacecraft can reach it relatively quickly.
Not only that, but the asteroid is close enough to make it easy for telescopes of multiple sizes on Earth to conduct what mission team members describe as an “observing campaign to determine the ‘spaceship effect’ on the asteroid.
Stay tuned for the next episode of “The Incredible Adventures of Mission Hera.”