Hera spacecraft takes photos of red planet’s second moon, Deimos, while en route to asteroids 110m miles away

Summary

The European Space Agency’s Hera probe captured images of Mars’s smaller moon, Deimos, during a high-speed flyby.

The 8-mile-wide, dust-covered moon, tidally locked with Mars, remains poorly understood. Scientists believe it could be debris from an impact or a captured asteroid.

The flyby, part of Hera’s journey to study asteroids, used a gravity assist to propel the probe toward Dimorphos, a moonlet of Didymos.

Hera will analyze Dimorphos, which NASA’s Dart probe hit in 2022, to assess asteroid deflection strategies for planetary defense.