By 
March 11th, 2025
Image credit: ESA/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Tune in to a spacecraft flyby of Mars!
The European Space Agency’s Hera probe needs a gravity assist to get to its final destination.
This livestream event will feature releases of images as the spacecraft slips by the surface of Mars – and also zoom by Deimos, the smaller of the two moons circling the Red Planet. Hera will also image Mars’s larger moon, Phobos, as it begins to move away from Mars.
The broadcast will involve ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, as well as Andy Weir, science fiction author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, as well as a surprise special guest.
To lend an eye to this flyby and release of imagery, the event is slated for Thursday March 13, starting at 11:50 Central Europe Time.
Image credit: ESA
Destination Dimorphos
Launched on October 7, 2024, Hera is to visit the first asteroid to have had its orbit altered by human action.
By gathering close-up data about the Dimorphos asteroid, which was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft in 2022, Hera’s mission is to sharpen asteroid deflection into a well understood and potentially repeatable technique.
Hera will reach the Didymos asteroid and its Dimorphos moonlet in December 2026.
For more information on this unique event, go to:
Here’s the website to check in on images from Hera’s Mars flyby, the official broadcast, at:
Posted in Space News
