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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Testing the Hera asteroid mission's autonomous vision-based navigation at GMV in Spain. The spacecraft takes advantage of the roughly-spherical shape of the main Didymos asteroid to fit it within a circle and estimate the line-of-sight distance between the spacecraft and the asteroid ‘centroid’. Once it moves less than 8 km from Didymain, the asteroid fills its field of view and this navigation mode is unavailable. Then comes the most ambitious navigation mode of all, based on autonomous feature tracking with no absolute reference.This involves imaging the same surface features - such as boulders and craters - in different pictures to gain a sense of how Hera is moving with respect to the surface, combined in turn with other information including onboard accelerometers for dead reckoning and the thermal infrared camera for overflying the asteroid’s night side.The same technique can also be used for navigating around the smaller Didymos moonlet asteroid.