A European Space Agency probe has captured a rare view of Mars’ outermost and more mysterious moon, Deimos.
The Hera probe is on a 110 million mile-long journey to inspect a pair of asteroids. But on its way, Hera flew past Mars and was able to get a view of Deimos — a small and lumpy 8-mile-wide moon — on March 12.
Hera was traveling at over 20,000 miles per hour as it got a shot of Deimos which was 160 miles away. Hera captured an image of Deimos’s lesser-seen far side.
“These instruments have been tried out before, during Hera’s departure from Earth, but this is the first time that we have employed them on a small distant moon for which we still lack knowledge,” says Hera’s mission scientist Michael Kueppers.
The Guardian notes that Deimos is “tidally locked,” meaning it is always showing the same side to the Red Planet. Scientists speculate that Deimos is debris from a huge impact on Mars or an asteroid that got dragged into the planet’s gravitational pull.
Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is better documented than Deimos thanks to it being larger and closer to the surface.
“For Deimos, we don’t have as many images as Phobos, so all opportunities to see Deimos are high value,” says Hera’s Principal Investigator, Patrick Michel of the University Côte d’Azur in Nice, France.
Mars appears blue in the main image because it was taken by Hera’s near-infrared Hyperscout H imager which captures data across multiple infrared wavelengths, revealing detailed information about an object’s surface composition.
Hera took the images as it was slingshotting around the Red Planet on its way to study Dimorphos, a small asteroid that orbits the larger Didymos. You may recognize those names since NASA intentionally crashed a probe into it in 2022.
DART was a success after altering Didymos’s trajectory. Hera is on its way to study the aftermath of DART and is slated to arrive at its target in late 2026.
Image credits: European Space Agency
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