The new antenna will support current flagship ESA missions including Juice, Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, Mars Express, and Hera.
The New Norcia 3 antenna will support current ESA flagship missions such as Juice, Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, Mars Express, and Hera.
The new deep space antenna will support ESA's flagship missions, including Juice, Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, Mars Express, and Hera, when it becomes operational in 2026.
The 'DART+HERA' program is expected to be validated in 2025 and is compatible with a 2027 launch.
Hera's flyby test prepared for the Martian Moons eXploration mission scheduled to launch in 2026.
Hera utilized Mars' gravity during its flyby to optimize its flight path.
The data gathered from the flyby will aid in the scientific investigation of Deimos and calibrate Hera's instruments for its mission in the Didymos system.
The ESA spacecraft Hera flew past Mars on March 12, 2025, capturing images of the planet and its moon Deimos.
During the closest approach, Hera came within approximately 5000 kilometers of Mars and about 1000 kilometers of Deimos.
In addition to the AFC, Hera utilized two other camera systems during the flyby: the Hyperscout-H visual near-infrared spectrometer and the Thermal Infrared Imager (TIRI) from JAXA.
The Asteroid Framing Camera (AFC) system on Hera, managed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), captured images during the flyby.
Hera is equipped with two identical cameras for redundancy, developed by Jena-Optronik and operated in coordination with the European Space Agency (ESA).
The DLR coordinates the German contributions to the Hera mission with funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
The HERA spacecraft with Juventas on board launched on Monday 2024-10-07.
Hera successfully launched on 2024-10-07.
The Ramses mission will use the spacecraft design developed for the Hera mission that launched 2024-10-07 to the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos.
Hera is a mission to the near Earth asteroid Didymos and its moon, Dimorphos, arriving in late 2026.
Hera's launch was carried out on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Hera's mission budget was €363 million ($395 million) and came in under budget, freeing up €20 million for another asteroid mission called Ramses.
Hera faced multiple launch delays due to development issues with the Ariane 6 rocket and weather challenges from Hurricane Milton.