The Hera Milani Mission

Hera is the European part of the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) international collaboration with NASA who is responsible for the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) kinetic impactor spacecraft. Hera will be launched in October 2024 and will arrive late 2026. The Hera mothercraft will accommodate two 6U CubeSat, one of which is Milani, named after Professor Andrea Milani, for his unique contribution to asteroid science and visionary role in defining a viable planetary defence technique. The Milani CubeSat is developed by Tyvak International leading a consortium of European Universities, Research Centers and Firms from Italy, Czech Republic, Finland. During the cruise to the Asteroid (+2 years), Milani CubeSat will be hosted inside the Hera mothercraft, periodically checked for health and charged. At arrival it will be deployed and commissioned while Hera is performing the Dydymos detailed characterization phase, at about 10 to 20 km distance from the asteroid. Milani mission objectives are defined to add scientific value to the Hera mission: i) Map the global asteroid composition, ii) Characterize the asteroid surface, iii) Evaluate DART impacts effects on asteroid and support gravity field determination, iv) Characterize dust clouds around the asteroid, enhancing the scientific return of the whole Hera mission. The instruments supporting the mission are “ASPECT” (VTT, Finland), a SWIR, NIR and VIS imaging spectrometer and the “VISTA” (INAF, Italy), a thermogravimeter characterizing dust particles below 10μm.