OHB Begins Assembly of ESA-JAXA RAMSES Apophis Probe, Targeting Spring 2028 Launch
Summary: OHB has started assembling the ESA-JAXA RAMSES spacecraft for asteroid Apophis, with the HAMLET hyperspectral camera contract signed; the mission targets a spring 2028 launch to arrive before the 2029 close Earth flyby of Apophis.
According to an OHB press release issued in early June, the company has kicked off the flight-model assembly of the RAMSES spacecraft in parallel at its Bremen, Germany headquarters and at OHB Italia, with the Italian entity serving as the mission prime contractor. RAMSES — the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety — is a deep-space rendezvous probe whose central goal is to reach asteroid 99942 Apophis before the body passes within roughly 31,000 km of Earth on April 13, 2029.
On the contracting side, ESA signed the main development contract with OHB Italia on February 10, 2026, with the contract value reported by several outlets at approximately 81.2 million euros, formally establishing the prime role. In the June announcement OHB added that the contract for the HAMLET hyperspectral camera payload has been signed, securing the instrument that will deliver multi-band imaging of Apophis surface composition. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is participating as a cooperation partner, continuing a pattern of JAXA involvement in rendezvous-class deep-space missions; the detailed JAXA payload contribution list has not been publicly itemized in this release.
The schedule is the binding constraint: from mid-2026 flight-model integration to a spring 2028 launch window leaves under 24 months for qualification, system-level testing and joint campaign activities, and any slip on the critical path directly compresses the 2029 arrival margin. Scientifically, RAMSES is positioned to capture a rare natural experiment, using the tidal forcing from Earth gravity during the flyby to measure in situ how the roughly 370-meter asteroid responds in surface material transport, orbital perturbation and internal structure, feeding data directly into future planetary-defence modelling work.