Mars and Deimos viewed by Hera

The Red Planet appears light blue in this image captured by ESA’s Hera spacecraft on 12 March 2025 during its gravity-assist flyby of the planet. The small dark object visible ahead of it is Deimos, one of Mars’s two moons.  

Launched in 2024, Hera is on its way to the binary asteroid system Didymos, where it will complete the world’s first planetary defence test of asteroid deflection. Once at its destination, it will survey Dimorphos – the small moonlet orbiting Didymos – whose orbit was altered by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022. Hera’s measurements will transform this large‑scale experiment into a well‑understood, repeatable technique for protecting Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids.