Hera Drone Hub aims for all UTM and U-Space developers to test their systems at its Zaragoza facilities.
The European Space Agency plans the Hera mission to launch in 2024 and arrive at Didymos in 2026 to study the impact site created by DART on Dimorphos.
The European Space Agency signed a €129.4-million contract with German company OHB for the detailed design, manufacturing, and testing of the HERA mission.
HERA will reach Didymos in late 2026 to study the effect of the DART impact and make a precise assessment of how much Dimorphos’s trajectory has been altered.
Hera is scheduled to launch in October 2024.
Hera is scheduled to reach the binary asteroid pair Didymos and Dimorphos in late 2026 for a minimum six-month study of the asteroid system.
Hera draws heavily on the earlier Asteroid Impact Mission program that was canceled in 2016 after failing to secure funding.
OHB will lead a team of companies from 17 ESA member states to complete the Hera spacecraft.
The European Space Agency finalized a 129,400,000 EUR contract with German satellite manufacturer OHB on 2020-09-15 to build the Hera asteroid spacecraft.
The 432,000,000 EUR for space safety is sufficient to fund work on the Hera asteroid mission.
More than 1,200 scientists and other supporters signed a letter calling on European Space Agency member states to fund Hera at the Space19+ ministerial meeting in Seville, Spain on 2019-11-27–28.
Hera is currently designed to launch in October 2024 and arrive at the near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its small moon Didymoon in December 2026.
Since 2016, ESA has been raising awareness among politicians of the possible danger of an asteroid impact as part of efforts to promote Hera.
Juventas will be part of ESA's HERA mission to a binary asteroid system, the first of its kind in Europe.
Juventas will perform satellite-to-satellite radio-science experiments and carry out a low-frequency radar survey of the asteroid interior in collaboration with HERA.
Dr. Ian Carnelli from ESA stated that the addition of Juventas will allow for additional bonus science alongside the HERA mothership.
ESA and GomSpace have signed a contract to develop a 6U nanosatellite named Juventas for the HERA mission.
ESA announced on 2018-06-25 that the proposed Hera mission had entered its next stage of engineering development.
The Hera spacecraft design will be similar to AIM and will be equipped with a camera that is a flight spare of an instrument developed by the German space agency DLR and used on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.
ESA will provide the formal proposal for the Hera mission to governments at the beginning of 2019.