OHB Italia S.p.A. Italia took part to the #ESPC – European Space Power Conference 2023 hold from 2nd to 6th October in Elche, Spain.
Our colleagues Giuseppe Catalanotto and Daniele De Angelis presented a paper on the “HERA #EPS (Electrical Power Subsystem) Design Challenges”. It was a very cutting-edge document presenting the EPS architecture with a #powergeneration capability never seen before: at 2.38AU. That means the opportunity to supply power to the spacecraft at twice the usual earth-sun distance.
HERA is the European contribution to an international double-spacecraft NASA/ESA collaboration for #planetarydefense. The target is a binary asteroid system, the #Didymos pair of near-Earth asteroids.
NASA has already performed (October 2022) a kinetic impact on the smaller of the two bodies with #DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test).
The ESPC 2023 was an important opportunity to share with the public OHB Italia #technologicaldevelopments in the frame of EPS for a planetary defense mission, namely:
- to investigate the Dydimos asteroid, including the very first #assessment of its internal properties
- to measure in great detail the outcome of NASA’s DART mission kinetic impact, helping to understand how effective #asteroiddeflectionmethods are.
In 2024, the HERA spacecraft will perform a high-resolution visual, laser and radio post-impact #survey of the observed body to create detailed maps of its surface and internal structure. Its data will allow, for the first time, the validation of the impact process at asteroid scale as repeatable planetary defense to safeguard the future of our #Planet.
Hereunder you can find a list of the people and companies that gave a strong contribution to EPS paper:
European Space Agency – ESA (M. Tourloukis, P. Martino)
OHB SE – OHB System (E. Kabaca, S. Crescuicci)
OHB Italia (G. Catalanotto, D. De Angelis, V. Iacovone, S. Botteghi)
Beyond Gravity (S. Alia, H. Boross)
Leonardo (G. Tesser, F. Faleg)
www.ohb-italia.it
