The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission will bring two CubeSats that will land on Dimorphos. The mission is expected to launch in October 2024. 

The Hera mission will investigate the binary asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, Dimorphos. The mission will measure the size and morphology of the impact crater on Dimorphos. The CubeSats will have ground-penetrating radar and multispectral imagers. 

The CubeSats are: 

• Milani Developed by Tyvak International srl, this CubeSat will visually inspect and detect dust on Didymos 
• Juventas This CubeSat will sound inside an asteroid. Its radar will penetrate up to 100 meters into Dimorphos

They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos. In about one year from now, the European Space Agency will launch its Hera mission. Its destination is the asteroid Didymos, and it’ll be the second human spacecraft to visit the 390-meter chunk of rock

What is Dimorphos and Didymos?

Dimorphos (formal designation (65803) Didymos I; provisional designation S/2003 (65803) 1) is a natural satellite or moon of the near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos, with which it forms a binary system. The moon was discovered on 20 November 2003 by Petr Pravec in collaboration with other astronomers worldwide.

What kind of objects are Didymos and Dimorphos?

Asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet Dimorphos make up what’s called a binary asteroid system – meaning the small moon (Dimorphos) orbits the larger body (Didymos).

The Hera mission is a space mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission’s primary objective is to study the Didymos binary asteroid system, which was impacted by NASA’s DART mission. The mission is scheduled to launch in October 2024. 

The Hera mission is part of the NASA/ESA Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration. The main goal of the mission is to study the effect of the DART mission on Dimorphos and Didymos. The mission will contribute to the validation of the kinetic impact method to deviate a near-Earth asteroid in a colliding trajectory with Earth. 

The Hera mission will analyze the aftermath of the DART mission, in which a spacecraft intentionally struck an asteroid’s moon. Astronomers announced in October 2022 that DART had successfully shortened the orbit of Dimorphos by 32 minutes. 

The Hera mission will be critically important for understanding the future of planetary defense technology. 

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