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2024-11-11

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Passing probe captures images of mysterious Mars moon (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Summary

The European Space Agency’s Hera probe captured images of Mars’s smaller moon, Deimos, during a high-speed flyby.

The 8-mile-wide, dust-covered moon, tidally locked with Mars, remains poorly understood. Scientists believe it could be debris from an impact or a captured asteroid.

The flyby, part of Hera’s journey to study asteroids, used a gravity assist to propel the probe toward Dimorphos, a moonlet of Didymos.

Hera will analyze Dimorphos, which NASA’s Dart probe hit in 2022, to assess asteroid deflection strategies for planetary defense.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

This reminds me of the book The Little Prince. There was also a cartoon about a child who would catch these asteroids with a butterfly net of sorts, maybe based on the book, that lives in the back of my brain that pokes its head out every blue moon. Pun intended.