Hera - Asteroid Detective

Hera – named after the Greek goddess of marriage – will be, along with NASA's DART spacecraft, humankind’s first probe to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system, a little understood class making up around 15% of all known asteroids.

Hera is a small spacecraft for deep space possessing comparable autonomy to a self-driving car. Its optimised design has benefited from multiple ESA studies of asteroid missions across the last two decades, most recently the proposed Asteroid Impact Mission.

Powered by solar arrays with a hydrazine propulsion system, Hera will be a small-scale mission in interplanetary terms, roughly the size of a large desk and weighing in at 350 kg, and up to about 870 kg fully-fuelled – which is compact compared to the van-sized, 3 tonne Rosetta comet-chaser.