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.
2 Comments
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1y
Dat rock?
EdWoodJaBlowmie@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
This reminds me of the book The Little Prince. There was also a cartoon about a child who would catch these asteroids with a butterfly net of sorts, maybe based on the book, that lives in the back of my brain that pokes its head out every blue moon. Pun intended.