NASA HERMES Mission

On January 27, 2022, NASA’s HERMES mission passed a critical mission review.

Highlights

• HERMES mission is a four-instrument suite, which will be mounted outside NASA’s Moon-orbiting Gateway.
• The review, called Key Decision Point C, evaluated the preliminary design and program plan of the mission, in a bid to achieve launch by its target launch readiness date of November 2024.
• With the successful review, the mission now moves into Phase C, which includes final design of HERMES mission.

About HERMES Mission

• HERMES Mission will be a critical part of Artemis mission as well as NASA’s goals of creating a permanent presence on the Moon.
• HERMES stands for “Heliophysics Environmental and Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite”.
• It will be mounted outside the “Habitation and Logistics Outpost module” of Gateway outpost of NASA.

The Gateway Program

• Gateway will be where Artemis astronauts work and live while orbiting the Moon, support scientific experiments & technology development which are applicable to lunar and future deep space human exploration.
• The Gateway Program is collaborating with SMD on the HERMES payload.
• This partnership will enable HERMES in successfully achieving science objectives from cislunar viewing location of the Gateway spacecraft.

Purpose of HERMES Mission

The HERMES Mission will help in monitoring space weather and fluctuating conditions in space driven by the Sun. Space weather comprise of:

1. Continuous stream of particles and magnetic fields, called as solar wind.
2. Blasts of billion-ton gas clouds, called as coronal mass ejections.
3. Flashes of ultra-bright light from solar flares and
4. Disturbances each of these create in near-Earth environment.

Some of these space weather events pose dangers to astronauts and robotic missions. HERMES will study these weather events, in an especially variable environment. HERMES will be flooded by magnetic fields and particles, which have interacted with Earth.