Earth Defense Spacecraft

Hera is the name of the killer spacecraft developed by NASA under the leadership of the European Space Agency (ESA). It will be used in the dead moon Dimorphos probe in 2024.

Hera is a combined mission with NASA’s killer DART spacecraft, which will travel to the dead moon Dimorphos in 2024.

Theo Daily SciTech, Mission Hera of the ESA (European Space Agency) in a joint mission with NASA to build a terrestrial defense system against extraterrestrial threats that could cause disasters, including mass extinction catastrophes like those of the dinosaurs .

The Hera ship approaching its target

The Hera vessel approaches the target – (Photo: ESA)

Last year, NASA’s DART space probe completed the first part of its mission plan “suicide”: Head straight for Dimorphos, a role-playing asteroid “moon” of another large asteroid and redirect its orbit.

It was an exercise: if another asteroid were to crash into Earth in the future, just a small impact to help redirect it would be enough to save humanity.

However, because it was a suicide mission, scientists were only able to calculate DART’s effectiveness indirectly after the mission. The Hera ship will carry out the remainder of the mission.

The Hera craft – about the size of a table – will be equipped with step-by-step instructions, navigation and automatic control like a self-driving car, carrying a highly sensitive optical camera and two CubeSats carrying spacecraft named Juventus and Milani.

It will approach Dimorphos and release two submarines. Juventas CubeSats will carry out a radar exploration of the asteroid, equipped with a gravimeter and an accelerometer to measure the surface mechanical response and gravity of this small moon. Milani CubeSats will take near-infrared spectroscopic images and sample asteroid dust.

Hera and the pair of CubeSats

Hera and a pair of CubeSats – (Photo: ESA).

Not only controlling and supporting the two spaceships, the mothership Hera – named after the queen of the spirit world in Greek mythology – also rehearsed and gained experience in monitoring multiple spaceships at the same time, a skill that many “aircraft carrier” Future versions of the universe will need it.

The impact crater left by the DART probe on this moon will also be examined closely.

“Hera will launch in October 2024. To meet this deadline, we have worked hard over the last year to perfect and test the spacecraft’s subsystems; while the overall mission successfully passed a critical system design review by the end of 2022” – said scientist Ian Carnelli, head of ESA’s Hera mission.

In 2023, Hera will be integrated into spacecraft environmental testing at ESA’s ESTEC test center in the Netherlands.

Article source: NLD