The two CubeSat passengers aboard ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence have exchanged their first signals with Earth, confirming their nominal status.
The pair were switched on to check out all their systems, marking the first operation of ESA CubeSats in deep space.
“Each CubeSat was activated for about an hour in turn, in live sessions with the ground to perform commissioning – what we call ‘are you alive?’ and ‘stowed checkout’ tests,” explains ESA’s Hera CubeSats Engineer Franco Perez Lissi.