The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Hera – named after the Greek goddess of marriage – is an ESA mission to explore a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% of all known asteroids.
Due to launch in 2024, Hera will travel to a binary asteroid system – the Didymos pair of near-Earth asteroids. The 780 metre-diameter mountain-sized main body is orbited by a 160 metre-wide moon called Dimorphos, which is about the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
After a two-year-long road trip through the Solar System, Hera will arrive at Didymos in 2026, where it will investigate the aftermath of the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft on the smaller of the two asteroids.
DART and Hera were conceived together as part of the international ‘Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment’ experiment. The two missions are valuable individually, but if flown in concert their overall scientific and technological return is significantly boosted. They will contribute to the important and positive message that international cooperation is key for the achievement of a planetary defence initiative.
This image is taken from the video Hera: ESA’s Planetary Defence Mission.