The Hera mission, which is part of the Space Safety Program of the European Space Agency (ESA), was launched on 7 October 2024 from Cape Canaveral with a Falcon 9 rocket. By the time of abstract submission it successfully completed most of its near-earth commissioning activities.
Hera will perform a rendezvous with Didymos in the fall of 2026 and investigate it over 6 months. With NASA’s...
Our knowledge of the internal structure of asteroids relies entirely on inferences from remote sensing observations of the surface and theoretical modeling. Is the body a monolithic piece of rock or a rubble-pile, and how high is the porosity? What is the typical size distribution of the constituent blocks? Are these blocks homogeneous or heterogeneous? Direct measurements of an asteroid’s...
On April 13, 2029, (99942) Apophis with a diameter of about 340 meters will approach Earth’s surface at about 31,000 km. Significant tidal torques will be exerted on Apophis, with possible alterations of its rotation state and internal structure, measurable seismic waves and real-time surface disturbances. This very close Earth flyby presents an unprecedented planetary defense and science...
The OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft will characterize asteroid (99942) Apophis over 18 months in 2029 and 2030 [1-3]. The mission is split into phases designed to address specific scientific objectives [3]. Because of the long period and non-principal axis rotation of Apophis, APEX will observe at regular intervals every few hours as it moves through multiple observing geometries to build up coverage...
The planetary defense is an important activity for humankind. JAXA has been involved in this activity for long time, and recently Planetary Defense Team has been established and started to work.
The first thing to do for the planetary defense is to discover celestial bodies that will collide with the Earth and to estimate their orbits accurately. We carry out observations of Near-Earth...
Hayabusa2# is an extended mission of Hayabusa2, which will spend another decade conducting various scientific and engineering investigations highlighted by a flyby at Asteroid (98943) Torifune in 2026 and a rendezvous with Asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031. Our space flight operations have continuously performed cruise science investigations of exoplanets, comets, and zodiacal light. Recently, the...
To be able to provide advanced warning of future or imminent impacts of asteroids or comets, the first step is to observe the sky and discover these objects by means of dedicated NEO surveys. Most current and planned NEO surveys are ground-based and carried out in the visible wavelength range. However, this approach has some limitations, such as (1) weather dependency, (2) that only a portion...