Hera (the Greek goddess of wedding, protector of Women) is a planetary defence mission under development at the European Space Agency (ESA) - launching in October 2024. Its objectives are to investigate the Didymos binary asteroid, including the very first assessment of its internal properties, and to measure in great detail the outcome of NASA's DART mission kinetic impactor test that happened on September, 27th, 2022.
Hera will provide extremely valuable information for future asteroid deflection missions and science; increasing our understanding of asteroid geophysics as well as solar system formation and evolutionary processes. Dr. Patrick Michel is the Principal Investigator (PI), Dr. Benoît Carry is the co-chair of the Ground Observations Working Group and Dr. Paolo Tanga is also part of this Working Group. All three are part of UCA, OCA and CNRS.
More details here: https://www.heramission.space/
