Margherita Cardi, Milani programme manager (left) and Alice Milani (right) unveil the winning design of the Milani patch contest at the Milani CubeSat's delivery event at Tyvak International in Turin. Alice Milani is the daughter of the man who the Milani mission is named after.
Andrea Milani, professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, was a planetary defence pioneer who first devised what became ESA’s Near Earth Object Coordination Centre, based at the Agency’s ESRIN centre in Frascati, Italy. Then in 2004 he proposed the idea of a double spacecraft planetary defence mission called Don Quijote. One spacecraft – called Hidalgo – would impact a non-threatening asteroid while another spacecraft – called Sancho – would gather data to validate asteroid impact models. His proposal evolved into the NASA’s DART mission (formerly Hidalgo) – which in 2022 diverted the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos – and the follow-up Hera mission (formerly Sancho) to gather close-up data on the mass and makeup of the asteroid and DART’s impact site. Sadly, Andrea never lived to see the implementation of his idea, passing away unexpectedly in 2018.