"Scientifically there's a huge amount we can learn from asteroids," says Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queens University ...

The Hera probe has swung around Mars, using the planet’s gravitational pull to fling itself toward its asteroid target.

In November 2021, a Falcon 9 sent NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) probe on its way to the binary asteroid system Didymos. Ten months later, DART slammed into the smaller space rock ...

Deimos is the smaller and less photographed of Mars’ moons. This egg-shaped object, only measuring about 7.7 miles in diameter (12.4 kilometers), is tidally-locked with the Red Planet making it often ...

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 ...

However, Hera's target of study is much smaller than the little 7-mile moon of Mars. The binary asteroid pair is measured in feet instead of miles. The spacecraft will visit the asteroid Didymos ...

The gravity of the red planet shifts the spacecraft's trajectory towards the Didymos binary asteroid system, shortening its trip by months and saving substantial fuel. This is a simulation of that ...

That’s a 1 in 59,000 possibility of impact, meaning there is a 99.9983% chance that the asteroid will safely zip by Earth in seven years, according to NASA. The agency also shared that the new ...

Credit: ESA/JAXA Of course, Mars is not the end goal of Hera. Its primary mission is to visit the binary asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos, the latter of which was struck in 2022 by NASA's DART ...