Hera Sends Images of Mars and Its Moon Deimos
Hera Mission Scientific Team, March 12, 2025. X/ @ESA_Hera
March 13, 2025 Hour: 8:34 am
This planetary defense probe is on its way to visit the first asteroid whose orbit has been modified by human action.
On Wednesday night, the planetary defense probe Hera captured images of the surface of Mars, as well as the face of Deimos, the smaller and more mysterious of the two Martian moons.
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The European Space Agency (ESA) released data and images on Thursday from this successful flyby, an important milestone in Hera’s journey to the binary asteroid system Didymos.
Launched on October 7, 2024, the car-sized spacecraft is on its way to visit the first asteroid whose orbit has been modified by human action. By collecting close-up data on the 151-meter-diameter asteroid Dimorphos, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera will help turn asteroid deflection into a “well-understood and potentially repeatable” technique.
“We are going to conduct incredible science, and this is just the beginning. In 21 months, the spacecraft will reach our target asteroids and begin our investigation of the impact site of the only object in the Solar System whose orbit has been measurably altered by human action,” said Ian Carnelli, Hera mission director at ESA.
The flyby was carefully designed by ESA’s Flight Dynamics team. As it approached within 5,000 kilometers of Mars, the planet’s gravity altered the spacecraft’s trajectory toward its final destination, the Didymos binary system, to which Dimorphos belongs. This maneuver shortened the journey by several months and saved a considerable amount of fuel.
Moving at 9 kilometers per second relative to Mars, Hera was able to capture images of Deimos from a distance of up to 1,000 kilometers, observing the far side of the moon, which is less visible from Mars.
During the flyby, Hera used three instruments: the black-and-white camera (Asteroid Framing); the Hyperscout H hyperspectral imager to help characterize the mineral composition; and the thermal infrared imager, supplied by the Japanese space agency JAXA, which can reveal physical properties such as surface roughness.
This marks the first time Hera has used its payload for scientific purposes beyond Earth and the Moon. Hera, along with DART, is a planetary defense mission, and both are part of the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) program. With these missions, ESA and NASA aim to demonstrate the technology needed to deflect asteroids to protect Earth from a potential impact.
There is already a wealth of data on DART’s achievement, thanks to its onboard camera and a small Italian satellite (LICIACube) that detached from the spacecraft a few days before impact and captured images of the plume of ejected fragments, along with observations from several telescopes. However, crucial information is still missing to fully understand what happened and to refine asteroid deflection models.
Hera, carrying two shoebox-sized satellites (cubesats) and involving around 100 European companies and institutes, will need to answer key questions—for example, whether a crater formed on Dimorphos or if the collision globally deformed the asteroid.
Asteroids are the “building blocks” from which planets formed during the development of the Solar System. Those that did not merge with one of these celestial bodies have been traveling through space ever since. There are millions of them, ranging from centimeters to meters and even kilometers in size, with varying levels of potential danger.
Approximately 38,000 asteroids are classified as NEOs (Near-Earth Objects), meaning their orbits pass close to Earth’s orbit in astronomical terms.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE