ESA's Hera mission

🛰️I'm currently speeding my way thru deep space to the Dimorphos🪨asteroid, the only Solar System body whose orbit has been shifted by human action - when NASA's DART spacecraft💥impacted it - to check what happened to it next! See where I am right now: whereis.space/hera/

Operating across 140 million km of space from ESOC's Interplanetary Control Room (left), ESA’s Hera mission team has upgraded the software running it - leaving the spacecraft ready to explore the distant Dimorphos and Didymos asteroids this autumn esa.int/Space_Safety/H…

Welcome to the Golden Age of 🪨Asteroid Exploration! 10 missions and 1 event every asteroid fan needs to know (number 6 steals the show!)...

Views of 2 new asteroids! The Hera team congratulates @JAXA_en 's Hayabusa2 for flying by 450-m diameter Torifune (l) and @CNSA_en's Tianwen2 for arriving at tiny 18-m Kamoʻoalewa (r). Hera reaches Dimorphos this autumn - the 1st asteroid to have been changed by human action!

Asteroids regularly slam into Earth, but in 2022 a little bit of Earth slammed into an asteroid - in the shape of NASA's DART spacecraft hitting Dimorphos. This autumn ESA's Hera spacecraft reaches this same body to try and find out: could we save Earth from an incoming asteroid? #AsteroidDay

The European Space Agency has contracted Spanish company @emxys for the first CubeSat designed to operate on an asteroid's surface. It will be deployed by ESA's Ramses mission onto asteroid Apophis as it passes close by Earth on Friday 13 April 2029 esa.int/Space_Safety/P…

Humans changed an🪨asteroid - now we find out how! Especially for Asteroid Day,🎥watch the full story so far of our Hera mission🛰️, on its way thru deep space to probe the first Solar System body transformed by human action💥: esa.int/ESA_Multimedia…

Want to know about our Hera asteroid mission for🪨Asteroid Day, which is on its way to the 1st asteroid changed by human action? Watch our cartoon series, starting here 👉 esa.int/ESA_Multimedia…

Happy #AsteroidDay ! But why today of all days? Find out here, along with eight other key dates in asteroid history! esa.int/Space_Safety/P…

It's hot outside, and the 1-km-scale asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1 flies by at lunchtime. Why not stay in and follow the Asteroid Day Festival, live from Luxembourg? Bringing together astronauts, asteroid experts and space mission engineers, the action starts at 10 am: youtube.com/watch?v=FacoaT…

Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1 flies past Earth on Saturday – great advertising for this weekend’s Asteroid Day festival! After a Friday evening astronomy session, Saturday's event includes astronauts, asteroid experts and engineers. Watch it live here: youtube.com/watch?v=FacoaT…

The backbone of ESA's Ramses asteroid mission is now standing tall in its Bremen cleanroom. From here on in the mission is being developed in two halves in parallel, to ensure its reaches its spring 2028 launch deadline: esa.int/Space_Safety/P…

🪨Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1, as monitored by ESA's Planetary Defence team, makes a close approach to Earth this Saturday that could be visible with small telescopes 🔭 esa.int/ESA_Multimedia…

This asteroid is a little… quirky. Shaped like a five-mile-long peanut 🥜 Wobbles like a top 🌪️ Encountered water, but lost it 💦 Published today, NASA’s Lucy mission reveals close-up imagery and data from its flyby of oddball asteroid Donaldjohanson. More: go.nasa.gov/3Qx5F3Y

Get up to speed in space with ESA Impact, our online summary of Europe's last three months of space activity: esa.int/About_Us/ESA_P…

Programme now available for next week's International Asteroid Day festival on 26-27 June! Join us at Cercle Cité, Luxembourg, or if you can't make it in person, most talks will be streamed live on the Asteroid Day YouTube channel: asteroidday.org/events-in-luxe…

Asteroid Apophis will fly by Earth on Friday 13 April 2029. People have nothing to worry about, but scientists are excited! A workshop in Padua this week discussed ESA's Ramses mission, which will fly with the asteroid to see what Earth's gravity does to it... ramsesmission.space/workshop-2026

6月11日、#COPUOS2026 にてサイドイベント “Planetary Defence in Action: Global Cooperation on #RAMSES”を開催しました！

At tomorrow's @UNOOSA Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, representatives of @JAXA_en, @ASI_spazio and @ESA come together for a breakfast panel to present Hera's sister mission Ramses

@shabbyangel @esaoperations our instrument view extends only to the mid-Atlantic at that latitude, sorry

@esaoperations Then can you tell us what the sonic boom was over South Carolina one day before that

Saturday’s sonic boom heard over Boston was due to an airbursting meteor, as confirmed by US weather satellite GOES-19. A European geostationary weather sat performs a comparable skywatch, read more here: esa.int/Space_Safety/F…