• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured
  • More News ⌄
    • SatNews
    • SatMagazine
    • MilSatMagazine
  • Events ⌄
    • MilSat Symposium
    • SmallSat Symposium
    • Satellite Innovation
  • Contacts
  • SUBSCRIPTION

SmallSat News

You are here: Home / News / GomSpace’s Didymoon Objective

GomSpace’s Didymoon Objective

November 12, 2019 by editorial

The continued development of the Juventas Cubesat is the focus of an addendum to the contract between GomSpace A/S and the European Space Agency (ESA) for the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission, although final approval for this mission has not yet been approved by Europe’s space ministers as of this writing. That is expected to occur during ESA’s Space19+ meeting this month.

The total value of this contract to be shared among several partners is 1,165,000 euros, with the focus being the development of smallsat payloads in support of ESA’s Hera mission, which itself is part of the AIDA and NASA DART missions. The GomSpace share of the funding is 295,000 euros.

Travel to the Didymos binary asteroid system is the goal. Juventas is a 6U cubesat that contains a low frequency radar as the primary payload and the smallsat will operate in close proximity to the Didymos asteroid system to perform radar and radio-science experiments that target the moon of the binary asteroid, nicknamed Didymoon.


Artistic rendition of Hera at Didymos.

Image is courtesy of ESA.

The mission will be completed when the smallsat attempts to land on the surface of Didymoon to take measurements on the landing dynamics from likely bouncing events to capture details of the asteroids surface properties.

The mission will end with measurements taken by a gravimeter payload to give insight into the dynamical properties of the asteroid.

GomSpace is the project lead with the science team, including collaborators from the Royal Observatory of Belgium and the University of Grenoble Alpes. The project continues its collaboration with:

  • GMV Innovating Solutions from Romania leading the guidance, navigation and control subsystem
     
  • Brno University of Technology from the Czech Republic contributing to the radar digital design
     
  • Astronika from Poland delivering the radar antenna.

 

This addendum adds new partners to the Juventas team, including EmTroniX from Luxembourg who will deliver the radar electronics and GomSpace Luxembourg who will contribute to the mission operations and AIV activities.


Niels Buus

Niels Buus, CEO of GomSpace, said Juventas will be the first GomSpace designed nanosatellite in deep space demonstrating its capabilities in the most harsh  of environments to date.

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Archives

  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019

© 2019–2025 SatNews

x
Sign Up Now!

Enjoy a free weekly newsletter with recent headlines from the global SmallSat industry.

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thanks for subscribing! You will now receive weekly SmallSat News updates.
We love our advertisers.
And you will too!

Please disable Ad Blocker to continue... We promise to keep it unobtrusive.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Thanks for subscribing! Please check your email for further instructions.