GomSpace + ESA sign contract change notice for the Juventas CubeSat implementation

GomSpace and ESA have signed a Contract Change Notice (CCN) with a value of 1,500,000 euros (approx. SEK 18 million) — the Juventas CubeSat mission is led by GomSpace with support from a range of European subcontractors.

*Juventas will be a ‘6-unit’ CubeSat, selected to fly aboard Hera along with the similarly-sized APEX Asteroid Prospection Explorer, built by a Swedish-Finnish-German-Czech consortium*

The amount for GomSpace in the CCN is provided to perform system level adaptations to increase the mission robustness. The Juventas spacecraft is expected to be delivered by the close of 2023 for integration and testing together with the HERA mothercraft.

*Artistic rendition of the HERA mothercraft, courtesy of ESA.*

Together, NASA’s DART and Hera missions, and the international research collaboration known as the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), will demonstrate deflection technology that could be used to protect Earth from hazardous asteroids by shunting them off a collision course.

The smallest radar to fly in space has been delivered to ESA for integration aboard the miniature Juventas CubeSat, part of ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence. The radar will perform the first radar imaging of an asteroid, peering deep beneath the surface of Dimorphos – the Great Pyramid-sized body whose orbit was shifted last year by the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft.

Juventas is a 6U smallsat containing a low frequency radar, named JuRa, as its primary payload

The smallsat will operate in close proximity to the Didymos asteroid system, focusing radar and radio-science experiments targeting the moon of the binary asteroid, named Dimorphos.

Juventas will complete its mission by attempting to land on the surface of Dimorphos, making measurements on the landing dynamics from likely bouncing events to capture details of the asteroids surface properties and end with measurements taken by a gravimeter payload to give insight to the dynamical properties of the asteroid.