Imminent launch of ESA’s HERA mission
On 7 October 2024, from the Cape Canaveral launch pad, the European Space Agency's (ESA) HERA probe will take off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher, marking a milestone in the AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) mission. This program, in which two members of the IPGP, Sébastien Charnoz and Gustavo Madeira, are taking part, aims to test and study planetary defense strategies against the threat of asteroids that are potentially dangerous for the Earth.
Artistic view of the HERA spacecraft close to the Binary. On the right the two CubeSats Milani (bottom) and Juventas (top). © ESA
Publication date: 27/09/2024
Press, Research
Related teams :
Cosmochemistry, Astrophysics and Experimental Geophysics (CAGE)
Related themes : Earth and Planetary Interiors
After a journey of almost two years, HERA will reach in 2026 the Didymos asteroid binary system, made up of the main asteroid and its small moon, Dimorphos. In 2022, NASA’s DART mission collided with Dimorphos and slightly deviated its orbit around Didymos. HERA aims to study the consequences of this impact in detail and to provide crucial data on the internal structure of Dimorphos, its dynamics and the effects of the impact on its orbit. To achieve this, the probe will deploy a fleet of two CubeSats (Milani and Juventas) around the asteroid, the first to operate in deep space. HERA is ESA’s first planetary defense mission and aims to gain a better understanding of the internal structure of asteroids and their mechanical properties with a view to their possible deflection.
The IPGP is involved in the HERA mission through two members of the Cosmochemistry, Astrophysics and Experimental Geophysics (CAGE) team at the IPGP: Gustavo Madeira, postdoctoral fellow, and Sébastien Charnoz, astrophysicist and professor at the Université Paris Cité. The latter is head of the international interdisciplinary ‘Dynamics’ group and a member of the HERA Science Team.
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- Assembling of solar panels on the HERA spacecraft . © ESA
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- HERA international science Team at the last workshop before launch in 2024 at ESTEC (Netherlands). © ESA
He and his team are in charge of studying the gravitational environment of the asteroid and its moon, and are also involved in coordinating the various measurement instruments. Their aim is to model the asteroid’s internal structure, its gravity field and the dynamics of the particles surrounding the Didymos-Dimorphos system, in order to understand how they evolved after the DART impact in 2022.
As well as representing a breakthrough in planetary defense, this mission is also a fantastic opportunity for the scientific community to gain a better understanding of the formation and evolution of binary asteroids. The next step will be to study the Apophis asteroid.
« The Hera mission will better our understanding on the impact physics on asteroids, because these surfaces in micro-gravity have strange behaviours, impossible to reproduce on the Earth. »
Sébastien Charnoz
