[P-PS07] Solar System Small Bodies: Explorations of Ryugu, Bennu, and the Solar System at Large

[PPS07-12] The ESA Hera mission: rendezvous with a binary asteroid and planetary defense

★Invited Papers

*Patrick Michel¹, Tatsuaki Okada², Michael Kueppers³, Ian Carnelli⁴, Paolo Martino⁵, Adriano Campo Bagatin⁶, Benoit Carry¹, Sebastien Charnoz⁷, Julia de Leon⁸, Alan Fitzsimmons⁹, Simon Green¹⁰, Carsten Guettler¹¹, Alain Herique¹², Martin Jutzi¹³, Ozgur Karatekin¹⁴, Naomi Murdoch¹⁵, Petr Pravec¹⁶, Holger Sierks¹¹, Colin Snodgrass¹⁷, Paolo Tortora¹⁸, Kleomenis Tsiganis¹⁹, Stephan Ulamec²⁰, Jean-Baptiste Vincent²⁰, Kai Wuennemann²¹, Andy Cheng²², Andy Rivkin²², Nancy Chabot²², Olivier S Barnouin²², Carolyn Ernst²², Derek C Richardson²³, Angela Stickle²², Masahiko Arakawa²⁴, Akiko Nakamura²⁴, Hideaki Miyamoto²⁵, Seiji Sugita²⁵, Makoto Yoshikawa² (1.Universite Cote D Azur Observatoire De La Cote D Azur CNRS Laboratoire Lagrange, 2.ISAS JAXA, 3.ESA ESAC, 4.ESA HQ, 5.ESA ESTEC, 6.University of Alicante, 7.IPGP, 8.Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, 9.Queen's University, 10.The Open University, 11.Max Planck Institute, 12.IPAG, 13.University of Bern, 14.Royal Observatory of Belgium, 15.ISAE-Supaero, 16.Czech Academy of Sciences, 17.The University of Edinburgh, 18.University of Bologna, 19.University of Thessaloniki, 20.DLR, 21.Natural History Museum Berlin, 22.APL JHU, 23.University of Maryland, 24.Kobe University, 25.The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:Asteroids, Binary Asteroids, Impact Physics, Planetary Defense, Cubesats, Space Mission

The Hera mission has been approved for development and launch in 2024 in the new ESA Space Safety Programme by the ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Space19+, in November 2019.

Hera will contribute to the first deflection test of an asteroid, in the framework of the international NASA- and ESA supported Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration.

Hera will rendezvous for the first time with a binary asteroid, (65803) Didymos, and in particular its secondary, of only 160 m in diameter. So far, no mission has visited such a small rock in space. Moreover, for the first time, internal and subsurface properties will be directly measured.


As a crucial contribution to planetary defense, Hera will perform the measurements necessary to understand the effect of the NASA DART impact on Didymos' secondary in 2022, in particular its mass, its internal structure, the direct determination of the momentum transfer and the detailed characterization of the crater left by DART. These measurements will also provide unique information on many current issues in asteroid science.


The scientic legacy of the Hera mission will extend far beyond the core aims of planetary defense. Hera is thus the European contribution to the international asteroid exploration era.

Acknowledgement: Funding support from ESA and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870377 (project NEO-MAPP) is acknowledged.