After a year of intensive testing, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Hera mission is ready to depart from Europe to its launch site in the USA. The spacecraft, designed for planetary defense, was transported from ESA's Test Centre in the Netherlands to Cologne Airport, Germany, where it will fly to Cape Canaveral, USA, for its launch in October.
Hera, which will travel through space for two years, will study the Didymos binary asteroid system. In particular, it will analyze the effects of NASA’s DART spacecraft impact in 2022, which altered the orbit of Dimorphos, a moon the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The Hera team, led by Paolo Martino, expressed excitement after completing the tests and highlighted the hard work carried out by ALTER to meet the tight schedule. Once at its destination, Hera will investigate the asteroid and its moon, providing key data to improve planetary defense techniques.
The launch is scheduled aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, marking a milestone in ESA's history.
We hope this will be the first of many campaigns under the Space Test Centre – KUB model.