Europe launched its first spacecraft to help develop a defense against city-killer asteroids slamming into Earth. The European Space Agency’s Hera mission, to which defense firms Thales and Leonardo contributed technology through their joint venture Thales Alenia Space, took off from Cape Canaveral on Monday riding on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. About 30,000 asteroids measuring 100 to 300 meters travel the solar system in orbits that bring them relatively close to Earth, with one such space rock hitting the planet every 10,000 years, according to Thales. The Hera mission will investigate the result of NASA’s asteroid redirection test, in which the U.S. agency rammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 to test planetary defense capabilities. Mid-sized asteroids are the ones of concern, as their impact would be devastating for a populated area, capable of destroying an entire city or create a tsunami, according to Thales.
Thales Alenia Space provided the communications subsystem for the Hera mission, allowing ESA to track and control the spacecraft. ESA plans to build on the experience acquired with Hera for its future Ramses mission, which needs to launch in 2028 for a rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis, which will pass within 32,000 kilometers of Earth in April 2029. Such a mission would also measure the asteroid’s physical properties, essential to determine when and where, and with what power, a deflector mission would need to safely divert it away from Earth.