The Hera mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), which was launched on Monday from Cape Canaveral (Florida), has included the participation of Sener, responsible for its low gain antenna or LGA (Low Gain Antenna). Hera is the first ESA planetary defence mission and will carry out a detailed study of the impact of the asteroid Dimorphos, the moon put into orbit of the binary asteroid system known as Didymos.

The objective of Hera is to demonstrate the reliability of kinetic deflection as a planetary defence technique. Through its approach, Hera will collect and expand crucial missing data on Didymos and its asteroid Dimorphos following NASA’s DART mission and its impact on the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, which caused an alteration in its orbit.

The antenna provided by Sener will help establish the ship’s communication with the tracking stations on Earth to send scientific data. The company has extensive experience in the design of fixed and steerable antennas, used for communication with satellites in all Earth orbits, and for probes and observatories sent into deep space. In this way, it has participated, for example, in the development of the low-gain antenna for the BepiColombo mission.

In a final test before its shipping to its Indian launch site, ESA’s eclipse-making double-satellite Proba-3 mission has received commands from its science team and transmitted images back, exactly as it will operate in orbit.

Led by Sener in close collaboration with an industrial team made up of a broad consortium of more than 29 companies from 17 countries, Proba-3 will demonstrate the feasibility of high-precision formation flight between satellites in space. Sener is the prime contractor for the mission and is responsible for both the flight and ground segments.

Proba-3 is an extremely technically and scientifically ambitious mission. Through exquisite, millimetre-scale, formation flying, its dual satellites will accomplish what was previously a space mission impossible: one platform will cast a precisely held shadow onto the other, in the process blocking out the fiery Sun to observe its ghostly surrounding atmosphere on a prolonged basis.

The last in a series of five ‘System Validation Tests’ for the mission involved scientists at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels sending payload operation requests to the mission’s control centre at ESA ESEC, the European Space Security and Education Centre, across the country at Redu.

The control centre processed these requests then sent telecommands to the science instruments aboard the Proba-3 spacecraft, currently located in a cleanroom in Kruibeke, to manage the requested scientific observations in a fully automated fashion.

Now its testing is complete, Proba-3 will now be shipped to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India on 21 October for a planned launch by PSLV-XL launcher on 29 November.

Its latest test spanned 12 hours in all, replicating part of Proba-3’s highly elliptical 19.5-hour orbit around Earth, with its formation flying for observing the solar corona taking place over a six-hour period around apogee, meaning the top of its 60 000 km orbit.

The two satellites’ formation flying will take place on a fully autonomous basis, but the testing included the sending of commands to science instruments for both in-flight calibration scenario and nominal scientific observation, as well as the update of some commands to be replaced with others. That latter functionality provides flexibility to the scientists to quickly react to exceptional solar events.

The only element of Proba-3’s ground segment not involved in the SVT testing is the actual ground stations dotted around the globe that will maintain contact with the satellites during each high-climbing orbit: Santiago in Chile, Yatharagga in Australia, Maspalomas on Gran Canaria and Villafranca near Madrid.

Made up of Coronograph and Occulter satellites, Proba-3 is the latest in an ESA family of experimental minisatellites dating back to 2001, the name coming from the Latin for ‘Let’s try!’.

The AOCS and LGA teams from Sener that participated in the European space observatory EUCLID have received formal recognition from the European Space Agency (ESA) for their outstanding work. 

The EUCLID AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control System) is an exceptional system, unprecedented in its concept, design, and operation. It provides pointing stability (75 milliarcseconds with 99.7% confidence) never achieved, enabling the acquisition of images and scientific knowledge that the EUCLID mission is generating following its successful launch in mid-2023.

In EUCLID, Sener has been the main contractor for the AOCS system, leading its design and development, a task of critical importance to achieve the mission’s objective: to create a three-dimensional map of large-scale structures, with the third dimension being time. This will be the most comprehensive map of the universe to date, collecting data that will help understand why it is expanding at the observed rate or the nature of dark energy and dark matter, which make up approximately 95% of the universe.

In addition, Sener designed, manufactured and tested in its facilities the LGA (Low Gain Antennas in X-Band) integrated by Thales Alenia Space in the TT&C (Telemetry and Telecommand) subsystem, which has a vital function in the satellite. These antennas allow data communication from the ground stations and the satellite itself, in both directions during the LEOP (Launch and Early Orbit Phase). The information transmitted from the satellite, known as telemetry, includes its health status and data from experiments and instruments. On the other hand, the information transmitted to the satellite, known as Telecommand, includes data and configuration parameters or commands to change the status of the subsystems in real time or delayed time.

The work carried out by the people at Sener was truly challenging, and the impact of the mission is very positive for the scientific community, aligning with Sener’s purpose: transforming the world by pushing the boundaries of technology.