Milani
Politecnico di Milano
ESA Hera mission CubeSat built by PoliMi — 6U nanosatellite deployed at the Didymos binary asteroid system to study dust and gas around the target (launched October 2024).
Technical specifications
- Form factor
- 6U CubeSat
- Mass
- ~8 kg
- Launch date
- October 7, 2024
- Launch vehicle
- Ariane 6
- Mission
- ESA Hera (planetary defence reconnaissance)
- Target
- Didymos binary asteroid system (65803 Didymos / Dimorphos)
- Primary payload
- ASPECT hyperspectral spectrometer (VNIR)
- Secondary payload
- Dust detector
- Arrival at Didymos
- 2026 (planned)
- Partners
- Politecnico di Milano, ESA, ASI
- Namesake
- Andrea Milani (Italian celestial mechanician)
About
Milani is a 6U CubeSat developed by Politecnico di Milano (PoliMi) in collaboration with ESA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) as a companion spacecraft to ESA’s Hera mission. Hera is ESA’s contribution to the DART/Hera planetary defence collaboration: DART (NASA) impacted the moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022, and Hera is the follow-up characterisation mission to study the impact effects and crater formation at the Didymos binary asteroid system.
Milani (named after Italian celestial mechanician Andrea Milani) was launched on October 7, 2024 aboard an Ariane 6 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, attached to the Hera spacecraft. Its primary payload is the ASPECT (Asteroid Spectrophotometric and Composition Tool) hyperspectral imaging spectrometer, covering visible and near-infrared wavelengths to map the mineralogical composition of Didymos and Dimorphos surfaces and characterise the ejecta plume created by the DART impact. Milani also carries a dust detector to measure particle flux and size distribution in the environment around the binary system.
Along with Milani, a second companion CubeSat — Juventas (developed by GomSpace/DTU Denmark) — was also deployed from Hera for radar sounding of Dimorphos’s interior. Both CubeSats were designed to operate independently around the asteroids while Hera maintains a safe observing distance. Milani’s deployment at Didymos is planned for 2026, making it the first CubeSat to independently operate in the vicinity of an asteroid.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.