Credit: Jena OptronikThis is the main camera ESA's Hera mission to planetary defense will rely on to navigate around the Didymos Asteroid System.Named Heranamed in honor of the Greek goddess of Marriage, it will be, together with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test Spacecraft (DART), humankind's first probe that rendezvous with a binary system of asteroid systems. This class, which is only 15% of all known asteroids, was not well understood.DART's spacecraft, due to launch in November, will first make a kinetic impact with the smaller of the two bodies. Hera will continue to follow up with a detailed post impact survey to make this large-scale experiment a repeatable and well-understood asteroid deflection technique.Jena-Optronik, Germany, produced this lightweight camera. It is being supplied by OHB System AG to lead the Hera industrial consortium. This camera will be used for both spacecraft navigation and scientific research of the asteroids' surface.Jena-Optronik's ASTROhead design is the basis of the camera. ASTROhead was already proven in space aboard Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle MEV-1 in 2019. It performed a historic autonomous docking to a geostationary satellite for a longer working life.Continue reading The amazing adventures of the Hera mission
