- The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully assembled its Hera spacecraft, designed for planetary defense, at OHB Bremen in Germany.
- The spacecraft will follow up on the DART mission’s impact with the Dimorphos asteroid, performing a close-up survey of the crater and measuring the mass and makeup of Dimorphos and the larger Didymos asteroid it orbits.
ESA’s Hera Mission Reaches Milestone with Successful Assembly for Planetary Defense
OHB Bremen, Germany, In a significant advancement for planetary defense, the European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully assembled its Hera spacecraft. The assembly took place at OHB Bremen in Germany, where Hera’s Core Module was carefully aligned and mated with its Propulsion Module.
A Milestone in Planetary Defense “The mission keeps on hitting milestones right now, but this is a big one, and a very emotional moment for the team,” said Paolo Martino, Hera system engineer. The Hera spacecraft is Europe’s contribution to an international planetary defense experiment. It will follow the DART mission’s impact on the Dimorphos asteroid, performing a detailed survey of the crater left by DART and measuring the mass and makeup of both Dimorphos and the larger Didymos asteroid it orbits.
Innovative Assembly Techniques The spacecraft was constructed as two separate modules to maximize working time, a technique often used for telecom missions but applied to a deep space mission for the first time. The Core Module, which hosts the onboard computer, mission systems, and instruments, was assembled at OHB, while the Propulsion Module was sent to Avio near Rome for the addition of its propulsion system. The modules were then reunited in Bremen for the final assembly.
The spacecraft is now ready for full-scale environmental testing at the ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands to check its flight readiness. The mission is set to lift off in October 2024.
