In order to start working on an asteroid mission, the European Space Agency signed a contract with OHB, but it will take more than a year to decide whether to fully fund the trip.
A contract worth 63 million euros ($68 million) was signed by representatives of ESA and OHB Italia on October 17 during the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in this city. The mission is named Ramses, or the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety, and it will prepare for an asteroid flyby of Earth in April 2029.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test will use the spacecraft design created for the Hera mission, which launched on October 7 to the asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos. In order to reduce costs, Ramses will be a more straightforward variant of Hera with a single-string design.
The next ministerial conference of ESA member states will take place in late 2025, and at that time they will decide whether to formally approve full funding for Ramses. But in order for Ramses to be prepared for launch in early 2028—which is necessary in order for the spacecraft to reach Apophis roughly two months before to its passing Earth—mission work needs to start prior to the ministerial.
With this contract, OHB, the prime contractor for both Hera and Ramses, will be able to complete the spacecraft’s design and start acquiring long-lead parts. Additionally, it will help with the coordination of the mission with other agencies’ projected missions to examine Apophis either prior to or following the flyby in April 2029.
During a July briefing, project scientist Patrick Michel stated that the preliminary work will mature the spacecraft design through a preliminary design review, coinciding with ESA’s announcement of its intent to support early work on Ramses. This will entail deciding whether payloads from the mission’s prospective international partners—South Korea, Japan, India, and the United States—are included.
According to ESA, funds from its Space Safety Program and General Support Technology Program went toward the Ramses contract. Hera contributed about 20 million euros, coming in under budget.
Paolo Martino, the head of ESA’s Ramses project, stated in a statement, “By developing and launching the Hera mission on time and under budget, we have demonstrated that ESA and its industrial and scientific partners can meet the challenging deadlines required by asteroid missions.” “With Ramses we are raising the bar even further, so we need to act now to ensure that, if our member states decide to support the mission in 2025, we can hit the ground running and reach Apophis in time.”
The estimated overall cost of Ramses was not disclosed by ESA. The agency had to pay 363 million euros for the Hera mission.Ramses asteroid mission contract is awarded by ESA
