10/03/2025
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Join us live for a star-studded event this Thursday, as scientists working on ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence release the mission’s first scientific observations beyond the Earth-Moon system, following its imminent flyby of Mars.
On Wednesday 12 March 2025 Hera – ESA’s first Space Safety mission – comes to within 5000 km of the surface of the red planet and 300 km of Mars’s more distant and enigmatic moon Deimos.
During this flyby Hera is performing observations of both Mars and the city-sized Deimos.
Hera then needs to swing its High Gain Antenna back to Earth to transmit its data home.
The next day, on Thursday 13 March, these images will be premiered by Hera’s science team from ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, explaining what they reveal, during our public webcast starting at 11:50 CET.
The team is being joined by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and renowned science fiction writer Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, as well as a surprise special guest!
Three Hera instruments are being used during the flyby, imaging Deimos from a minimum distance of 1000 km away:
– Hera’s black and white 1020×1020 Asteroid Framing Camera used for both navigation and scientific investigation acquires images in visible light.
– Hera’s Hyperscout H hyperspectral imager observes in a range of colours beyond the limits of the human eye, in 25 visible and near-infrared spectral bands, to help characterise mineral makeup.
– Hera’s Thermal Infrared Imager, supplied by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) images at the mid-infrared wavelengths to chart surface temperature, in the process revealing physical properties such as roughness, particle size distribution and porosity.
Results from the Deimos close encounter should help guide operational planning for next year’s Martian Moons eXploration Mission, MMX, being led by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in collaboration with NASA, the French space agency CNES, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and ESA.
MMX will not only collect detailed measurements of both martian moons but also land on Phobos to collect a sample and return it to Earth for analysis.
With Didymos being 780 m across and Dimorphos just 151 m across, Hera’s twin destinations are many times smaller than the city-sized Deimos moon, but Hera is headed on course towards them. A series of ‘impulsive rendezvous’ thruster firings during October 2026 will fine-tune its heading to reach the Didymos system that December.
