Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Hera aims to confirm if it is possible to deflect a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, as a repeatable strategy ready for use in case of an actual asteroid threat
Thales Alenia Space provided key technologies onboard the Hera spacecraft, which will send essential data from the Didymos binary asteroid, similar to one that could potentially impact our Planet
Madrid, 8 October, 2024 - Hera, the European Space Agency's (ESA) first planetary defence mission, was successfully launched yesterday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The satellite is now heading to a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System.
If an incoming asteroid were to threaten Earth, what could be done to cope with the situation? On September 26th 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed humankind's first test of asteroid deflection by crashing into the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet. This resulted in a shift of its orbit around the mountain-sized Didymos main asteroid.
Hera networking with Cubesats ESA
Next comes ESA's own contribution to the international Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration: the Hera mission will travel to Dimorphos so as to gather vital close-up data regarding the deflected body and turn DART's grand-scale kinetic impact experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique. Hera will provide in particular accurate measurements concerning the asteroid's mass, as well as crucial information about its make-up and structure, which are essential to interpret the outcome of the impact.
The Hera mission, will also carry out the most detailed exploration to date of a binary asteroid system - although binaries make up 15% of all known asteroids, they have never been studied in detail. Hera will also perform technology demonstration experiments, including the deployment of ESA's first deep space CubeSats' - shoebox-sized spacecraft to venture closer than the main mission then eventually land - and an ambitious test of self-driving for the main spacecraft, based on vision-based navigation. The OHB System AG (Germany), as prime contractor of Hera, led the industrial consortium, including responsibility for the overall spacecraft design, development, assembly, and testing.
Thales Alenia Space's contribution: a teamwork between Spain, Italy and Belgium
Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), provided key technologies onboard Hera spacecraft. Thales Alenia Space in Spain was responsible for the communications subsystem, which allows to control and track the spacecraft from a distance up to 500 million kilometre away and to send all the information gathered by Hera back to Earth. Thales Alenia Space in Italy developed the state-of-art Deep Space Transponder, while Thales Alenia Space in Belgium assembled the Travelling Wave Tube Amplifiers (TWTA) built by Thales, and developed the Power Conditioning and Distribution Unit (PCDU), which provides power to the spacecraft during all its lifetime.
Safeguarding our planet
Asteroids are bodies originated in the young stars nebulae that never grew to planets, formed of rock and metal. Among them, those that have an orbit that brings them close to Earth (within 45 million kilometres), known as near-Earth asteroids, represent a risk of hitting the Earth. There are plenty of such bodies in our Solar system, from tiny little ones measuring a few meters (there are 40-50 millions of them) up to larger ones, measuring more than 1 km but much more scarce (there's less than 1000 of them).
Neither the smaller near-Earth asteroids nor the larger ones represent a real threat to humanity. Small asteroids actually hit the Earth quite frequently (every two weeks) with no consequences. The larger ones, although potentially dangerous, are well known and tracked, and it takes millions of years to have one of them hitting the Earth. Actually, a 10km asteroid impact is the most accepted theory of the Cretaceous extinction around 66 million years ago, ending with three-quarters of the plant and animal species, among others the dinosaurs.
Hera scans DARTs impact crater ESA
The mid-sized class asteroids of more than 100 meters are the ones we need to worry about. There are about 30,000 near-Earth asteroids of the 100 to 300 meter size class, 82% of them still to be spotted, hitting the Earth every 10,000 years. The impact energy of such an asteroid is equivalent to around 50 megatons of TNT, the power of a Tsar Bomba . The effect of such an impact would be devastating if it reached a populated area, capable of destroying an entire city or to create a tsunami if it impacted a sea.
The Didymos binary asteroid system is prototypical in terms of size of the thousands of asteroids that pose a hazardous risk of impact to our planet. Around the Dydimos main body, 780 meter in diameter, orbits the 150 meter Dimorphos moonlet, which is the first body in the Solar System to have had its orbit measurably changed through human action, by the DART impact, and it is also the smallest asteroid yet visited by humankind.
The Hera spacecraft will reach the binary asteroid in October 2026, after a two-year cruise phase. The day Hera reaches Didymos, it will be 195 million km away from Earth.
ABOUT THALES ALENIA SPACE
Drawing on over 40 years of experience and a unique combination of skills, expertise and cultures, Thales Alenia Space delivers cost-effective solutions for telecommunications, navigation, Earth observation, environmental management, exploration, science and orbital infrastructures. Governments and private industry alike count on Thales Alenia Space to design satellite-based systems that provide anytime
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
12/06/2026
A fentanyl countermeasure that adapts to combat future black-market drugs Scripps Research scientists developed a vaccine that teaches the immune system to rapi...
11/06/2026
The immense size of the tourney and its Atlantic-spanning operation also disting...
11/06/2026
Nielsen has released a new soccer fandom consumer research report, The Fans Behind The Game: FIFA World Cup 2026 Edition, examining the soccer audience in the...
Facebook 
