Dietmar Pilz, ESA’s Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, comments. “This is an exceptional opportunity that will help accelerate European innovation, enabling researchers and industry to push the boundaries of onboard intelligence and autonomy. We invite Europe’s innovators to shape the next generation of intelligent, robust and autonomous space missions.

“We are looking for targeted, innovative experiments that push onboard intelligence beyond today’s procedural boundaries, while running safely alongside Hera’s flight-critical systems in a protected ‘sandbox’ environment. These ideas will help ESA mature technologies that reduce reliance on ground control, increase mission resilience, and enable more capable future exploration missions.”