The mysterious demos were seen, while the ESA’s planetary defense missions visit their goal asteroid.
This black and white image was taken by Hera’s asteroid framing camera. This camera will be used to track the demorphos through the space and once it reaches the destination, it will give the image of the Pits left by NASA’s double asteroid redirect test. Credit: ESA
Hera, the European Space Agency (ESA) Flagship Planetary Defense Mission which was launched in October 2024, took images of Mangal and Dimos yesterday, which was one of its two moon yesterday. The flybi of the mission was used as a gravity aid for its final destination in the binary asteroid system demorphos and Didimos. The mission used this journey as an opportunity to test the previous few scientific equipment of Mars.
Demos is a small and less photograph of Mars of Mars. This egg-shaped object, only 7.7 miles in diameter (12.4 km) is about 7.7 miles, is tidli-lock with a red planet, which makes it difficult to obtain images from Earth.
The mission used its three tools, as it found within 621 miles (1,000 km) hovering over the Helss Basin area of Mars within the demos. Hera used his black and white asteroid framing camera (above), which is used for both navigation and scientific purposes. This camera is used to indicate what features appear in visible light. In the image, Deimos dark appears compared to the red planet. This is because its surface is made of carbonus resolith which does not easily reflect light.
During the trek, Hera also used its hypersscout H hypercaseer imager to catch the surface of Mars and Demos in 25 visible and near-ended spectral bands. This imager gives a better understanding of mineral makeup of an object.
With his thermal infrared imagers, Hera took a picture showing a picture, which had a quite warm surface of Dimos vs Mars below it. This moon lacks an atmosphere and the image is pointed to the sun. The thermal imager of Hera also lifts the surface temperature as well as the properties such as particle size, hoof and roughness.
Hera has a total of 12 payloads, as well as two cubesats that will not release until after reaching Dimorphos and Didimos in December 2026. When it reaches asteroids, it will study the effects of the double asteroid redirect test of NASA on Dimorphos in 2022.
This flyb imaging not only supported Hera’s mission, but it would also help other future efforts. It includes Martian Moons Exploration Mission (MMX) under the leadership of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency along with several other agencies including NASA and ESA. This mission will collect data from other moon, phobos, along with demos, where it will eventually collect and collect samples to bring back to Earth. The mission is estimated to launch 2026.
