asteroid

How could the Hera mission team become certain their asteroid-explorer spacecraft was robust enough to be flown into space aboard a rocket? They took their spacecraft and shook it bodily, replicating the kind of vibrations it will…

Space Safety 10/11/2023 808 views 31 likes ESA’s Hera asteroid mission has completed acoustic testing, confirming the spacecraft can withstand the sound of its own lift-off into orbit. Testing…

It's the stuff of science fiction: Blasting off to the moon or an asteroid, drilling it, mining its resources and bringing some or all of it back to Earth.But that fiction is getting closer to becoming a reality. "The idea of extracting…

Almost exactly a year before launch, ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence went on show to more than 8 000 visitors at ESA’s Open Days at ESTEC in the Netherlands last weekend.About half the size of a Smart car, the…

Hot on the heels of the sample–return mission from an asteroid named Bennu, NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft to yet another asteroid.The Psyche mission — named after the asteroid it's planning to study — is set to blast off on…

PRIMORDIAL RELIC Like other asteroids, Bennu is a relic of the early solar system. Because its present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since forming about 4.5 billion years ago, it holds valuable clues to the origins…

A spacecraft that has travelled more than 950 million kilometres is dropping off a care package on Sunday: samples from an asteroid that lies more than 100 million kilometres from Earth.NASA's OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation,…

The moment ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence arrived at the largest satellite test site in Europe – the ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.The van-sized spacecraft was driven overnight from its…

Space Safety 24/08/2023 2219 views 46 likes Hera is complete. ESA’s asteroid mission for planetary defence was built and prepared in two halves, but now, through a painstaking operation, they…

NASA came to know of the giant asteroid two days…