European SMEs working on Hera

Hera is the European contribution to an international double-spacecraft collaboration with NASA to provide a better understanding of the effectiveness of the kinetic impact technique for planetary defence.

There are 28 small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) working on ESA’s Hera planetary defence mission, which involves about 100 companies in total. These SMEs are building European cutting-edge technologies for the spacecraft, its instruments and two CubeSats.

The Hera mission was supported at the ESA Ministerial Council in 2019. The project committed to heavily involve SMEs contributing to the diversity of innovation and increasing technical know-how in the European workforce. SMEs from 14 Member States are involved and represent 15% of Hera’s overall budget.