ESA's Hera program will travel to the Dimorfo space rock to analyze the impact of the NASA DART spacecraft in 2022. King Felipe VI plans to visit the ESA European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC).

Located in the Dutch town of Noordwijk, its facilities are finalizing the development of a cube-shaped probe and 13-meter-wide solar panels. The ESTEC Satellite Test Center is the largest in Europe, and has facilities to simulate all launch circumstances and the space environment. In 2029, an asteroid called Apophis, about 450 meters tall, will pass near Earth. "It will be less than 36,000 kilometers away, and it has already been ruled out that it could crash. Yes, it can be seen in certain areas, and that is why we have detection systems,'' says Franco Pérez Lissi, 34, a Spanish systems engineer at ESTEC. "The dinosaurs could have been saved from the meteorite impact that caused a cataclysm and their disappearance with a mission like this,'' he says. Dimorfo is scheduled to arrive at the end of 2026. The main asteroid around which Dimorph revolves is called Didymus. The first of the minisatellites carries a low-frequency radar that will send pulses to Dimorfo. It will also carry a gravimeter and an accelerometer to measure the mechanical response of the surface and the ultra-low gravity of the body. The second drone has a hyperspectral camera that allows you to see at different wavelengths. “It outperforms the naked human eye in checking for organic components on the surface, whether iron or other minerals, says Pérez Lissi, who is responsible for the design and testing of the space drones. It could also be another asteroid that collided a long time ago and formed this body trapped by gravity,’ he says.