First came NASA’s DART spacecraft which impacted asteroid Dimorphos on 26 September 2022, slightly modifying its orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos.

Hera, carrying two smaller CubeSats, will conduct a detailed post-impact survey of Dimorphos gathering unique scientific data in order to turn this grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and repeatable asteroid deflection technique.

Hera's Milani CubeSat, developed and engineered for ESA by Tyvak International in Turin, Italy, is named after Andrea Milani, the late professor of mathematics at Pisa University and pioneer of asteroid impact monitoring.