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
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Due for launch in October 2024, ESA's Hera spacecraft for asteroid planetary defence will spend two years flying to the Didymos binary asteroid system. There it will focus on the smaller of the two bodies, Dimorphos, which has previously had its orbit around its parent shifted by an impact with NASA's DART spacecraft. Hera will gather additional data on the mass, structure and composition of the Great-Pyramid-sized asteroid, to transform the DART impact from a one-off experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable technique that could be used for real if ever needed against an oncoming asteroid.