On 26 September 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, shifting its trajectory round its father or mother asteroid, Didymos. The mission was the first of a duo of craft set to go to the binary asteroid system in an try to be taught extra about how we’d defend our planet from asteroids, ought to one be on a collision course.
The follow-up mission, involving a spacecraft referred to as Hera constructed by the European Space Agency (ESA), is due to launch in October. It will investigate the collision’s aftermath utilizing a set of detectors and can carry two CubeSats referred to as Juventus and Milani. But before it might probably go away Earth, Hera should bear a barrage of tests at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands to guarantee it might probably deal with the rigours of launch and area.
Heli Greus, the mission’s product assurance and security supervisor, is overseeing checks that embody excessive noise and vibrations to simulate launch situations, and a thermal vacuum take a look at, during which Hera will face the excessive temperature and different fluctuations that it’s going to expertise in area. If it passes, Greus will probably be the final particular person to signal the probe off for launch. But, she says, in each launch marketing campaign, there are at all times surprises.
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