At ESA’s ESOC mission management centre, in Darmstadt, Germany, each launch is preceded by the pre-launch briefing – and the all-important staff photographs.

The following spacecraft to be flown from ESOC, Hera, is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral House Drive Station on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this month.

Hera is Europe’s first asteroid mission and would be the first spacecraft to rendezvous with and discover a binary asteroid system. The Didymos system is particular one: it’s house to humankind’s first try at a method that will someday be used to guard Earth from an asteroid on a collision course – asteroid deflection.

Two years in the past, on 26 September 2022, NASA’s 580-kilogram DART spacecraft slammed into the 151-metre Dimorphos asteroid, altering its orbit across the bigger, 780-metre Didymos asteroid. Now, Hera is launching on a mission to carry out an in depth post-impact survey of Dimorphos. Utilizing a set of scientific devices on the primary spacecraft and its two CubeSat passengers, Hera will assess the effectiveness of asteroid deflection and assist flip this experiment right into a well-understood and repeatable method for planetary defence.

Gathered contained in the Press Centre at ESOC, that is the staff that may take Hera to Didymos. They are going to oversee the mission from its essential first hours in house, via its two-year journey to Didymos, by way of Mars, and through its exploration of the 2 goal asteroids.

Months of preparations and simulations at mission management culminated in Saturday’s launch costume rehearsal and staff photographs. This last rehearsal introduced collectively the ESA groups and the mission’s companions to check communication hyperlinks between ESOC, floor stations and the spacecraft, and full a last, meticulous run via of the sequence of occasions that may happen on launch day.

Preparations, rehearsals, briefings and staff photographs full, mission management is GO for launch!

Observe @esa, @ESA_Hera and @esaoperations on X for dwell updates on launch day.

Hera is scheduled for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral House Drive Station in Florida, USA, on Monday 7 October, at 16:52 CEST / 15:52 BST.

ESA will livestream the launch on ESA WebTV, ESA YouTube and on ESA’s X, and LinkedIn accounts. Stay protection begins at 16:15 CEST / 15:15 BST.

Click on right here for the most recent particulars on how and when to observe the launch dwell.