APEX and Juventas CubeSats

ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence, being designed to survey the smallest asteroid ever explored, is really three spacecraft in one. The main mothership will carry two briefcase-sized CubeSats, which will touch down on the target body. Hera’s APEX CubeSat (left) will perform a multispectral mineral survey of its makeup, while the Juventas CubeSat (right) will perform the first radar probe of an asteroid.