Sooner or later, statistically talking, a big asteroid will influence Earth. Whether or not that’s tomorrow, in ten years, or an issue for our ancestors, ESA is getting ready.
As a part of the world’s first check of asteroid deflection, ESA’s Hera mission will carry out an in depth post-impact survey of Dimorphos – the 160-metre asteroid struck, and efficiently deflected, by NASA’s DART spacecraft.
Hera will quickly research the aftermath. Launching in October 2024, Hera will flip this grand-scale experiment right into a well-understood and hopefully repeatable planetary defence approach.
However earlier than Hera and its two CubeSats fly, they’re rigorously examined at ESA’s ESTEC check centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. From the power and noise of the rocket take-off to the sustained vacuum and temperature extremes of deep house, all points of Hera’s functioning are checked earlier than they start their journey, alone in house.
