Eyes on Hera: Asteroid mission’s cameras ready

ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary protection is about to realize its sight. Two full and totally examined Asteroid Framing Cameras have reached OHB in Germany for integration aboard Hera’s payload module. This instrument will present the very first star-like view of Hera’s goal for the mission to steer in direction of the Dimorphos asteroid, which final 12 months had its orbit altered by an influence with NASA’s DART mission.

“It’s a enormous milestone to have the very first Hera payload prepared for integration onto the spacecraft,” says Hannah Goldberg, Hera system engineer. “And the Asteroid Framing Digicam, AFC, just isn’t solely our first payload, but in addition an important, since by itself it might probably receive all of the mission’s core targets. Hera payloads are organized with core and alternative goals in thoughts—based mostly firstly on the information we now have to accumulate, then the secondary outcomes we search to acquire at any time when attainable.

“Our October 2024 launch date is creeping ever nearer, however the mission subsystems are starting to come back collectively as deliberate. So the following time we’ll see these cameras will likely be aboard the entire Hera flight mannequin when total spacecraft testing begins this autumn.”

Hera is Europe’s contribution to a world planetary protection experiment. Following the DART mission’s influence with the Dimorphos asteroid final 12 months—modifying its orbit and sending a plume of particles hundreds of kilometers out into space—Hera will return to Dimorphos to carry out a close-up survey of the crater left by DART. The mission may even measure Dimorphos’ mass and make-up, together with that of the bigger Didymos asteroid that Dimorphos orbits round.

Operated on a redundant foundation—which means one unit will likely be saved in reserve in case of failure—the AFC will play a pivotal position in Hera’s mission. In addition to buying detailed views of the floor of Dimorphos for scientific analysis, together with the crater left by the DART influence, the AFC may even be used for steerage, navigation and management.

The AFC will residence in on Dimorphos when it’s nonetheless a single level of sunshine within the sky—seen in conjunction with the bigger asteroid Didymos. The AFC will then transition to close-up navigation, using edge detection to maintain the asteroid centered in its discipline of view whereas monitoring floor options to derive Hera’s precise place from the asteroid in an identical method to self-driving automotive software program.

Across the identical dimension and form as a family vase, the 1.3 kg AFC has been designed, manufactured and examined by Jena-Optronik in Germany. The compact design with its lengthy baffle to guard the digicam’s optics from sunglare shares heritage with the startracker models that Jena-Optronik makes a speciality of—utilized to map the celebrities round a spacecraft with the intention to pinpoint its place in space.

Steffen Schwarz, Head of Advertising and marketing & Gross sales at Jena-Optronik, feedback: “Hera is a prestigious mission and we at Jena-Optronik are wanting ahead to make a decisive contribution to its success via our digicam.”

Possessing a 5.5 diploma discipline of view, the monochromatic AFC acquires pictures utilizing complementary metallic–oxide–semiconductor energetic pixel sensor (CMOS APS) expertise—a sophisticated, rad-hardened model of the imaging utilized in fashionable smartphone cameras—the FaintStar2 detector chip marketed by Caeleste in Belgium, initially designed for startrackers via a challenge in ESA’s Normal Assist Expertise Program.

“The photographs we are going to see from the AFC will resemble these returned by DART earlier than its influence,” provides Hannah. “For instance, the image we noticed of the 2 asteroids collectively in DART’s discipline of view, after which afterward the boulder-strewn floor of Dimorphos as DART was about to collide.

“The AFC’s pictures will likely be complemented by colour pictures from different devices, together with Hera’s HyperScout instrument which can see in 25 totally different colours and the ASPECT hyperspectral imager aboard the Milani CubeSat, whose imaginative and prescient will lengthen past seen mild into the infrared.”

Different Hera subsystems are at present being finalized: Hera’s laser-based PALT (Planetary Altimeter) coming from Portugal; the HyperScout2 imager from the Netherlands; the Milani CubeSat from Italy and the Juventas CubeSat from Luxembourg; and the TIRI thermal imager contributed by Japan.