The European Space Agency has awarded OHB Italia an initial contract worth €63 million to develop the Ramses mission, which will study an asteroid during its close approach to Earth.
In April 2029, the asteroid Apophis will pass within 32,000 kilometres of Earth’s surface. At this distance, it will come closer than geostationary satellites.
ESA hopes to take advantage of this rare natural phenomenon by launching its Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) probe. The mission will study the asteroid’s composition and observe how it reacts to Earth’s gravitational pull.
Ramses will be the agency’s next planetary defence mission under its Space Safety Programme. ESA and its member states will decide on whether or not to fully fund the mission at its next ministerial level council meeting in late 2025. However, as the mission would need to be launched by early 2028 in order to rendezvous with the asteroid before its close approach to Earth, the agency has made existing funds available for preparatory work.
On 17 October during the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, ESA announced that it had awarded OHB Italia with the contract for the mission’s consolidation and early implementation phases. This contract will enable the agency to be prepared to rapidly transition into the mission’s development phases once approval for full funding is agreed upon.
“Ramses will demonstrate that humankind can deploy a reconnaissance mission to rendezvous with an incoming asteroid in just a few years,” said Richard Moissl, heading ESA’s Planetary Defence Office. “This type of mission is a cornerstone of humankind’s response to a hazardous asteroid.”
To enable the rapid development of Ramses, the mission concept leverages much of the work done for ESA’s Hera mission. With Hera, the agency managed to go from contract to launch in just four years.
