LONDON, United Kingdom – A European spacecraft recently ventured past Mars on its journey to a pair of asteroids located over 110 million miles away. The probe, known as Hera, captured images of Mars and its lesser-known moon, Deimos, during this flyby.

Hera utilized a suite of instruments to photograph the red planet and Deimos, which is a small, irregularly-shaped moon measuring only 8 miles wide. Deimos orbits Mars alongside the larger 14-mile-wide moon, Phobos.

Traveling at speeds exceeding 20,000mph, the European Space Agency’s Hera probe snapped pictures of the far side of Deimos from a distance of 620 miles. Hera’s mission scientist, Michael Kueppers, expressed excitement at the opportunity to use these instruments on a celestial body with limited existing knowledge.

Deimos, covered in dust, remains locked in a gravitational embrace with Mars, showing only one face to the planet. Scientists believe Deimos could be the result of a massive impact with Mars or an asteroid captured by the planet’s gravity.

During a gravity-assist flyby, Hera’s near-infrared Hyperscout H imager captured Mars in a light blue hue. The spacecraft’s maneuver around the planet aims to propel it towards the asteroids it is scheduled to reach in December next year.

In the image captured by Hera, Deimos appears as a dark spot at the bottom, adjacent to the Terra Sabaea region near Mars’ equator. Several notable landmarks, including the Huygens crater and the Hellas Basin, are visible in the image.

Hera’s ultimate destination is Dimorphos, a 150-meter-wide asteroid orbiting a larger parent body, Didymos. In 2022, NASA’s Dart probe altered Dimorphos’ orbit through a controlled collision, marking the first asteroid to be influenced by human intervention. Hera’s mission will involve analyzing Dimorphos to assess whether asteroids posing threats to Earth could be redirected through such collision tactics.