Space Team Europe for Hera: Alain Hérique

Alain Hérique, Principal Investigator of the JuRa instrument on Hera’s Juventas CubeSat at the Université Grenoble Alpes, is passionate about the internal structures of Dimorphos and Didymos. He is almost certain that they are aggregates, but aggregates of what? Every asteroid is unique, with its own story. From Rosetta to Hera, Hérique has been working in radar systems to  probe small bodies like comets and asteroids. JuRa is a 60MHz radar whose low frequency will enable it to penetrate the interior of this binary asteroid system. He can’t wait for the first data to arrive!

Hera is ESA's first planetary defence mission, heading to a unique target among the 1.3 million known asteroids of our Solar System. On 26 September 2022 NASA’s DART mission performed humankind’s first test of asteroid deflection by crashing into the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet. The result was a shift in its orbit around the mountain-sized Didymos main asteroid. 

Now comes ESA’s own contribution to this international collaboration: the Hera mission will revisit Dimorphos to gather vital close-up data about the deflected body.

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