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 cubic spacecraft is seen with its solar arrays folded up on each side. Hera’s ‘top deck’ is visible, hosting most of its instruments, including its Asteroid Framing Cameras – seen left top – and the dispensers for its two CubeSats in the middle. Its main antenna used for communicating with Earth is seen to the right.

The ESTEC Test Centre was opened to the public for the occasion, and the Hera spacecraft exhibited behind an air-tight Perspex barrier. And during Saturday afternoon the Hera team’s family members paid their own exclusive visit.

Technicians continued to work on the spacecraft throughout the weekend, to prepare it for its first round of shaker testing, to simulate the violent forces of a rocket launch.

Hera is Europe’s contribution to an international planetary defence experiment. Following the DART mission’s impact with the Dimorphos asteroid last year – modifying its orbit and sending a plume of debris thousands of kilometres out into space – Hera will return to Dimorphos to perform a close-up survey of the crater left by DART. The mission will also measure Dimorphos’ mass and make-up, along with that of the larger Didymos asteroid that Dimorphos orbits around.

Hera is scheduled for launch in October 2024, to rendezvous with the Didymos and Dimorphos asteroid system about two years later.

ESTEC also hosted the latest Hera Science Workshop this week, allowing scientists and engineers working on the mission to see the spacecraft for themselves.

To find out more about Hera’s current test campaign, watch the latest episode of our Incredible Adventures of the Hera mission series.