{"id":8245,"date":"2022-01-30T19:28:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T00:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=8245"},"modified":"2022-01-30T19:28:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T00:28:27","slug":"nasas-hermes-mission-passes-key-milestone-moves-toward-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=8245","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s HERMES Mission Passes Key Milestone, Moves Toward Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"
Illustration of the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) and Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) of Gateway, with HERMES indicated by a red arrow. This older view shows HERMES in a different placement than its current planned location, which would be rotated 90 degrees on the HALO module and would not be visible from this vantage point. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s HERMES mission \u2013 a four-instrument suite to be mounted outside NASA\u2019s Moon-orbiting Gateway \u2013 has passed a critical mission review on January 27, 2022.<\/p>\n

The review, Key Decision Point C, evaluated the mission\u2019s preliminary design and program plan to achieve launch by its target launch readiness date no earlier than November 2024. With the successful review, HERMES now moves into Phase C, which includes the final design of the mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cHERMES will be a critical part of the Artemis mission<\/a> and NASA\u2019s goals to create a permanent presence on the Moon,\u201d said Jamie Favors, HERMES program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. \u201cWe\u2019re very excited to pass this critical milestone and move closer to launch.\u201d<\/p>\n

HERMES, short for Heliophysics Environmental and Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite, will be mounted outside the Habitation and Logistics Outpost module of NASA\u2019s Gateway outpost<\/a>. Gateway will be where Artemis astronauts live and work as they orbit the Moon, supporting scientific experiments and technology development applicable for both lunar and future deep space human exploration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gateway Program is proud to be collaborating with SMD on the HERMES payload,\u201d said Tim Horvath, Gateway payload integration lead. \u201cThis close partnership will enable HERMES to successfully achieve groundbreaking science objectives from the unique cislunar viewing location of the Gateway spacecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

HERMES will monitor space weather, the fluctuating conditions in space driven by the Sun. Space weather includes the continuous stream of particles and magnetic fields, known as the solar wind<\/a>; blasts of billion-ton gas clouds known as coronal mass ejections<\/a>; flashes of ultra-bright light from solar flares<\/a>; and the disturbances each of these create in the near-Earth environment<\/a>. Some of these events pose dangers to astronauts and robotic missions \u2013 but all of them are exciting scientific opportunities to understand our Sun and the space around us.<\/p>\n

HERMES will study space weather in an especially variable environment. As the Moon orbits Earth each month, it spends about one week inside Earth\u2019s long magnetotail, the portion of our magnetic field blown back from the Sun like a windsock. When inside the magnetotail, HERMES will be flooded by particles and magnetic fields that have interacted with Earth. The remaining three weeks, the Moon confronts the unfiltered Sun, measuring the solar wind and space weather in conditions closer to pristine interplanetary space.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an exciting challenge to make HERMES as compact yet flexible as it needs to be,\u201d said Kristen Brown, HERMES deputy project manager at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cWe\u2019ve had to package all the instruments into an extremely small volume without interfering with each other and while making sure the payload meets the Gateway interface requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHERMES is the first space weather monitoring platform on a crewed spacecraft to venture outside Earth\u2019s protective magnetic field,\u201d said Jim Spann, HERMES program scientist at NASA Headquarters. \u201cWhat we learn from HERMES will be critical to protecting astronauts as we venture forth with the Artemis mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

HERMES will contribute to a number of joint observations campaigns with other spacecraft. The European Radiation Sensors Array or ERSA<\/a> provided by the European Space Agency will be mounted nearby on the Gateway Power and Propulsion Element, or PPE, where it will measure higher-energy particles in the solar wind. Together they provide Artemis astronauts with a fuller picture of the space weather conditions they are flying through. HERMES will also collaborate with the two THEMIS\/ARTEMIS<\/a> spacecraft already in orbit around the Moon, adding another data point to help measure smaller scale structures in the solar wind and magnetotail. Finally, as a new asset in NASA\u2019s Heliophysics System Observatory<\/a>, it contributes to an ever-growing fleet of spacecraft monitoring space weather conditions throughout the solar system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great opportunity to be part of historic human spaceflight missions while expanding the possibilities for new science with international partners,\u201d said Bill Paterson, HERMES project scientist at Goddard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s HERMES mission \u2013 a four-instrument suite to be mounted outside NASA\u2019s Moon-orbiting Gateway \u2013 has passed a critical mission review on January 27, 2022. The review, Key Decision Point C, evaluated the mission\u2019s preliminary design and program plan to achieve launch by its target launch readiness date no earlier than November 2024. With the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":8247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.nasa.gov\/hermes\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/320\/2022\/01\/Gateway-HALO-with-HERMES_labeled-1536x864.png","fifu_image_alt":"NASA’s HERMES Mission Passes Key Milestone, Moves Toward Launch","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8246,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8245\/revisions\/8246"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}