Tag: Planetary Defense
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ESA Awards €81.2 Million Contract for Apophis Asteroid Mission
The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded OHB Italia an €81.2 million contract to build, assemble and test the spacecraft for its Ramses mission, which will study the asteroid Apophis during a rare close flyby of Earth in 2029. The contract signals that the mission has entered full development following approval of funding at ESA’s…
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Hera observes asteroids as DART reveals more about its destination
Travelling through the asteroid belt, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft has taken its first images of asteroids. The spacecraft is heading toward asteroid 65803 Didymos and its companion Dimorphos, on a mission to study the results of an intentional collision between NASA’s DART spacecraft and Dimorphos. The new images validate Hera’s capabilities to lock…
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SpaceX launches Europe’s Hera asteroid mission ahead of Hurricane Milton
Two years ago, a NASA spacecraft smashed into a small asteroid millions of miles from Earth to test a technique that could one day prove useful to deflect an object off a collision course with Earth. The European Space Agency launched a follow-up mission Monday to go back to the crash site and see the…
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ESA’s Hera mission launched to asteroid binary as Falcon 9 returns to flight
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission, which is traveling to asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos as a follow-up to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, beat weather odds and successfully launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This flight, the 95th Falcon flight of 2024, was the first Falcon 9 mission to…
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ESA’s Hera mission progresses towards launch pending Falcon 9 readiness
An artist’s rendering of the Hera spacecraft alongside the CubeSats, Juventas and Milani. Graphic: ESA The European Space Agency is on the cusp of launching its first planetary defense mission, a complement to NASA’s 2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The goal of these missions is to understand how Earth can be protected from…
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Brace for impact: DART successfully slams into asteroid
NASA and Johns Hopkins teams have successfully tested the world’s first dedicated planetary defense mission: the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART impacted Dimorphos, a moonlet of near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos, at 7:14 PM EDT (23:14 UTC) on Monday, September 26, while traveling at an approximate speed of 22,000 kilometers per hour. DART’s collision with…
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NASA to proceed with asteroid surveillance mission
Artist’s concept of the Near-Earth Object Camera, or NEOCam, spacecraft. NASA’s planned NEO Surveillance Mission will be similar to the NEOCam concept, which has been under study for more than a decade. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After years of studies, NASA plans to move forward with a space-based telescope that could launch as soon as 2025 to…