The European Space Agency uploaded a software upgrade to the Hera probe while it's flying about 140 million km from us. The update brings online the remaining instruments and the autonomous navigation ahead of its encounter with a pair of asteroids this fall.
- ESA updated the onboard software of the Hera probe from about 140 million km away.
- The remaining instruments and autonomous navigation are now online ahead of the encounter with Didymos and Dimorphos this fall.
- Early next year Hera is set to release two cubesats.
Hera is Europe's follow-up to the DART impact - the probe going to inspect the asteroid NASA slammed into back in 2022. On its way there, it just got an upgrade more important than it sounds.
What strikes me here isn't the science so much as the nerve. Anyone who's updated a device and watched it stall halfway knows that gut drop. Now imagine the same thing, except the object is 140 million kilometers away, there's no undo button, and behind the upgrade were dozens of days of rehearsal on the ground before anyone hit send.
Discipline in its purest form. You don't touch the live system until you've rehearsed it on a mockup. Same principle we preach for every deploy of ours - just staked on a probe that has no room for error.