Technology designed in Dublin will assist a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft called Hera as it navigates a close fly-by of Mars on Wednesday.
An instrument designed by InnaLabs Ltd in Blanchardstown will provide the mission with key altitude and navigation data as it passes the red planet.
“Hera’s orientation during the Mars fly-by will depend on the information provided by the ARIETIS-NS gyroscope navigation system,” said Dr Alberto Torasso, vice-president of space programmes at InnaLabs.
“The gyroscope was designed and qualified by InnaLabs at their facilities in Dublin ensuring it can withstand harsh space conditions, while delivering reliable data to the spacecraft.”
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Hera – named after the Greek goddess of marriage – is a follow up mission to the 2022 Nasa Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a planetary defence mission which crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to deflect it off course.
Hera and DART will test, for the first time, whether it is possible to alter the orbit of a body in space and defend our planet from incoming asteroids.
Hera will on Wednesday fly close to Mars to observe its moon Deimos.
It will also pick up speed by harnessing the gravitational whiplash of entering Martian orbit in a manoeuvre that will shorten the ongoing journey to the DART asteroid impact site by several months and save significant fuel.
Hera will come within 5,000km of the Martian surface during the exercise. It will capture images of Deimos, the smaller of Mars’ two moons, from a minimum distance of 1,000km, possibly going as close as 300km. It will also image Phobos, Mars’s larger moon, as it moves away from the planet.
The exercise will permit scientists to calibrate Hera’s instruments before it travels on to its final destination; a pair of asteroids orbiting the sun at a range of 6 million km, out past Neptune, the farthest planet from the sun.
The asteroid Dimorphos, a mini-moon that is orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymous, make up a binary system. The two asteroids do not pose a collision threat to Earth, but were selected for the Hera-DART missions because they were ideal for an asteroid impact test. In 2022, DART hit into Dimorphos.
Hera will investigate how much that impact deflected Dimorphos through the transfer of momentum when it slammed into the asteroid head on.
Scientists will measure the size and nature of the impact crater that was created and analyse the debris cloud that was left behind following the impact.
“This is a great success story for the Irish space strategy and our improving ecosystem to join the global Space boom,” said Innalabs chief executive John O’Leary.
The fly-by will be broadcast by the ESA.
