RAMSES

RAMSES (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) is an ESA planetary-defence mission targeting asteroid Apophis ahead of its close Earth approach in April 2029. The spacecraft design reuses heritage from ESA's Hera mission. Prime contractor is OHB Italia, awarded an EUR 81.2 million contract in February 2026; the Critical Design Review was completed the same month.^[1]

Launch is planned for April 2028 on a JAXA H3 rocket from Tanegashima; detailed scheduling documentation indicates a mid-April to mid-May 2028 window based on rideshare constraints.^[2][3] Rendezvous with Apophis is targeted for February 2029, with the close-approach flyby at approximately 32,000 km from Earth on 13 April 2029.

The planned instrument suite includes eight payloads: HAMLET, a hyperspectral imager to be provided by cosine Italia covering 650 to 1500 nm^[4]; TIRI, a thermal infrared imager to be contributed by JAXA; PALT, a lidar altimeter; CHANCES, an imaging system; RPS, a plasma spectrometer; RSE, a radio science experiment; and two asteroid framing cameras. Two CubeSats are planned for deployment: Farinella (Tyvak International) and Don Quijote (Emxys). JAXA will also contribute the solar arrays.^[2][3]

HAMLET is an EO-heritage instrument adapted for asteroid spectroscopy; its spatial resolution and field of view had not been confirmed in public documentation at time of research.^[4] The PALT and RPS instrument developers had not been confirmed in public sources at time of research.