Small-body mission · ESA
Hera
ESA's follow-up to DART and the European half of the AIDA collaboration — it is cruising to the Didymos–Dimorphos system to survey the crater DART left and measure Dimorphos's mass, turning the DART experiment into a well-characterised deflection.
Imagery
ISS HERA
iss058e013161 (2/13/2019) --- Photo documentation of ISS HERA taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
2019
NASA/Johnson · NASA media (public domain)
This is the small-body-missions view of Hera. See its main mission page for the full profile.
Targets & sample
Mission & science
- Goals
- Characterise the outcome of the DART impact — Dimorphos's mass, the crater, and internal structure.
- Engineering milestones
- Launched in October 2024; arrival at the Didymos system planned for late 2026.
- Outcome
- In cruise — no results yet.
- Known limitations
- En route; the encounter has not yet happened.
Knowledge connections
- Target of65803 Didymos
- Target ofDimorphos
- Member of groupOrbiter Mission
- Member of groupRendezvous Mission
- Launched byFalcon 9
- Operated byESA
- Associated withAIDA
- Tracked byESTRACK
- Associated withCharacterization
- Associated withKinetic Impactor
Sources
The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.
- ESAEuropean Space Agency
European missions, observatories, and space science imagery.