Hera spacecraft trio to fly safe with inter-linked radio

ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence involves not just one spacecraft but three: two shoebox-sized CubeSats will fly up to a few dozen kilometres away from their mothership around the Didymos binary asteroid system. Keeping this trio in communication to fulfil their own mission needs while also ensuring their safe separation is the task of a novel inter-satellite link radio technology, produced by a Portuguese company best known for terrestrial drone systems.