on 7 October 2024 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and did a flyby of Mars on 12 March 2025 on the way to the asteroid, which it won’t reach until October 2026. Hera came as near as 5000 ...

The Hera probe has swung around Mars, using the planet’s gravitational pull to fling itself toward its asteroid target. During its brief rendezvous with the Red Planet, Hera caught a glimpse of ...

Deimos is about 15,000 miles from Mars. Scientists have previously speculated that it may actually be a piece of asteroid, not a moon. Hera got as close as 1,000 kilometers, or about 620 miles ...

Europe's Hera mission, on its way to the Didymos–Dimorphos double asteroid system, has performed a close flyby of Mars, receiving a crucial gravitational slingshot, testing some of its instruments, ...

On 12 March 2025, the Hera spacecraft used Mars's gravity to accelerate its journey to the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid system. The probe's camera system, developed and built in Germany, captured ...

If you want to know about Hera, a satellite hurtling through deep space toward two asteroids, you can just ask it. “My mission is to study the aftermath of NASA’s DART impact on the asteroid Dimorphos ...

But its mission operators also wanted to take advantage of the Martian flyby and use it to test the mechanical eyes that will allow Hera to study the asteroid it is targeting, Dimorphos.

Europe's HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first test of our planetary defenses.

The results of Hera's flyby could ultimately tell us whether Deimos is a captured asteroid or made from debris from a giant impact on Mars. Europe's Hera mission, on its way to the Didymos ...

Europe's HERA mission is aiming to find out how much of an impact a NASA spacecraft made when it deliberately smashed into an asteroid in 2022 in the first-ever test of our planetary defenses.

Credit: ESA Europe's Hera mission, on its way to the Didymos–Dimorphos double asteroid system, has performed a close flyby of Mars, receiving a crucial gravitational slingshot, testing some of ...

The small, lumpy moon Deimos pictured in front of Mars in an image taken by Europe's HERA probe Deimos is the smaller and more mysterious of Mars' two moons The asteroid Dimorphos, pictured by the ...