Eye of ESA's asteroid mission

This is the main camera that ESA's Hera mission for planetary defence will be relying on to explore and manoeuvre around the Didymos asteroid system.

Hera - named after the Greek goddess of marriage - will be, along with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft, humankind's first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% of all known asteroids.

The DART spacecraft - due for launch this November - will first perform a kinetic impact on the smaller of the two bodies. Hera will follow-up with a detailed post-impact survey to turn this grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and repeatable asteroid deflection technique.

Produced by Jena-Optronik in Germany, this lightweight camera is being supplied to OHB System AG, leading the Hera industrial consortium for ESA. The camera will be used both for spacecraft navigation and scientific study of the two asteroids' surfaces.

The camera is based on Jena-Optronik's existing ASTROhead design. ASTROhead has already been proven in space, aboard Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle, MEV-1 in 2019, helping it perform a historic autonomous docking with a geostationary telecommunication satellite in order to extend the satellite's working lifetime.

Related Links
Hera at ESA
Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

paypal only

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal

Asteroid-hunting space telescope gets two-year mission extension
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 01, 2021
For two more years, NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) will continue its hunt for asteroids and comets - including objects that could pose a hazard to Earth. This mission extension means NASA's prolific near-Earth object (NEO) hunting space telescope will continue operations until June 2023. "At NASA, we're always looking up, surveying the sky daily to find potential hazards and exploring asteroids to help unlock the secrets of the formation of our solar system, ... read more