18.11.2021
Planetary defenders: after NASA’s DART comes ESA’s Hera
The world will be watching the milestone launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART, spacecraft on Wednesday, 24 November, intended to alter one small part of the Solar System forever.
DART will collide with the small moon of an asteroid in order to shift its orbit around its parent body – to test the concept of diverting threatening objects away from Earth.
ESA will provide crucial ground station support to DART as it departs for deep space, helping relay signals from the ambitious mission immediately following launch.
Furthermore, one group of Europeans is following DART’s launch campaign particularly closely: the team developing ESA’s Hera spacecraft, designed to undertake a close-up survey of the consequences of DART’s collision.
“It has taken a lot of hard work to reach the point of launching this first planetary defence mission – we’re wishing our US counterparts a great and well-deserved success,” comments Ian Carnelli, overseeing ESA’s Hera mission.
“DART and Hera were originally conceived on a coordinated double-spacecraft basis, with one mission to perform the deflection and the other to perform precision measurements of the result.”
“Over the years, the implementation of the two missions was separated but international collaboration was maintained through the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment, or AIDA, scientific consortium. And while the pair are designed to function separately, their overall science return will be boosted greatly by being able to combine their results.”