Meet Hera, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) very own asteroid detective. Hera, along with her two CubeSats, are about to embark on an incredible adventure. The two CubeSats, Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary travel with Hera on an adventure to explore Gemini, a double asteroid system typical of the thousands at risk of impacting planet Earth. In this episode of The Incredible Adventures of Hera, you will travel with Hera to visit Gemini. Along the way, you’ll discover who the main characters are, why this mission is so important, what ESA hopes to achieve with Hera, and more. Before you begin your incredible adventure with Hera, we need to explain that ESA’s Hera mission is a planetary defense mission to a near-Earth binary asteroid system. This mission is being carried out by ESA, in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). JAXA is contributing to the thermal imaging and extensive knowledge of asteroid science through the legacy of Hayabusa2. Along with NASA’s DART mission, the technology required for planetary defense will be demonstrated, so this is a very exciting adventure. What are asteroids? Asteroids are primitive bodies that hold clues to the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Asteroids vary greatly in size and shape, ranging from 1 meter rocks to a dwarf planet nearly 1000 km (600 mi) in diameter. they are metallic or rocky bodies without an atmosphere. So how do you choose one asteroid out of thousands for a space mission? NASA made that difficult choice with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which aims to hit a spacecraft on the moon Dimorphos on September 27. Choosing the right target was essential to doing the science right. NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Research Laboratory, which are working together on the mission, said there were a few things that made the binary asteroid system ideal for this critical mission. “The Gemini system is a binary eclipsing system, meaning that from our vantage point on Earth, Dimorph regularly passes in front of and behind Gemini as it orbits,” JHUAPL officials wrote in a DART newsletter. The test location is also ideal because the two asteroids pose no threat to our planet, mission team members stressed. Additionally, the Didymos system is only 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, meaning spacecraft can get there relatively quickly. Not only that, but the asteroid is close enough to make it easy for multi-magnitude telescopes on Earth to conduct what mission team members describe as “an observing campaign to determine the impact of the spacecraft” on the asteroid. Stay tuned for the next episode of “The incredible adventures of the Hera mission.”
