ESA's Ramses mission to asteroid Apophis

Artist's impression of ESA's Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses). 

In July 2024, ESA's Space Safety programme received permission to begin preparatory work for the development of Ramses using existing resources. The decision whether to commit to the mission in full will take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting in November 2025.

If approved, Ramses will rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis and accompany it through its extremely rare flyby of Earth in April 2029. Researchers will study the asteroid as Earth’s gravity alters its physical characteristics. Their findings will improve our ability to defend our planet from any similar object found to be on a collision course in the future.

The Ramses design will be similar to that of ESA's Hera asteroid detective, launching later this year on a mission to the binary asteroid system, Didymos. Like Hera, Ramses is expected to carry two CubeSats passengers that will deploy from the main craft once it has arrived at the asteroid. 

This is an early visualisation and not an accurate depiction of the final Ramses spacecraft design.

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