Cartoon Hera made using LEGO® bricks, designed by Frans Snik

After a hectic four years of work ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence was launched into space in October 2024. As a keepsake of the spacecraft they channelled so much effort into, the Hera team also commissioned the building of a detailed model using LEGO® bricks– as well as smaller variants that you can go ahead and build for yourself!

The team got in touch with Frans Snik, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands who has the hobby of designing detailed models of astronomical observatories such as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Extremely Large Telescope. He also previously branched out into recreating tiny versions of the space-based James Webb Space Telescope for kids to build at events.

“Frans did us proud with a roughly 1:11 scale model of Hera, plus the twin CubeSats the spacecraft is carrying to the Dimorphos asteroid, using 4448 bricks in all,” explains Hera mission documentalist Mark Brophy. “It was first debuted in public during last October’s ESA Open Day at ESTEC in the Netherlands, just in advance of Hera’s actual launch.

“But this is such a complex model that it would be hard and costly for enthusiasts to build their own. So we also had Frans design smaller replicas of the cartoon versions of Hera and its two CubeSats, as featured in our Incredible Adventures of the Hera mission series of animations.”

This multi-part animation series recounts the adventures of the Hera asteroid detective plus its accompanying CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – on their journey through construction, testing and launch, and soon their visit to Mars and its enigmatic moon Deimos.

Frans made versions of the three cartoon spacecraft (including Hera’s dinosaur mascot), plus the twin asteroids that they are on the way to visiting: the larger Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos, which in September 2022 had its orbit shifted when NASA’s DART spacecraft impacted with it. These asteroids come complete with arms to wave hello to Hera!

“I had the amazing opportunity to see the actual Hera spacecraft a few times when it was located in the Test Centre at ESTEC, and I was very impressed by the number of technical capabilities within such a compact device,” says Frans.

“It was a nice challenge for me to add as much details as possible into the Hera model. I have also become a fan of the Hera cartoons, which contain even more little details – I have tried to incorporate those into the models as well."

Want to build them? Download our assembly instructions here, including a link to order the LEGO® bricks needed.

Hera is ESA’s first planetary defence mission, on its way to visit the first asteroid to have had its orbit altered by human action. By gathering close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a well understood and potentially repeatable technique.

DISCLAIMER: LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorise or endorse this project.