This spacecraft is headed to NASA's asteroid-crash aftermath — but first, it'll stop by Mars

In the mid-right of the image, two three-paneled solar arrays span the image height, meeting in the center at a cubic-like spacecraft with two circular attachments. In the background on the right, starry space. On the left, the half-shadowed rusted-red planet Mars.

The journey into space is a long one, which gives many spacecraft time for a side quest or two during their missions. In the case of the European Space Agency's Hera mission, the side quest is a close encounter with Mars — more specifically, a good look at its moon: Deimos.

Scheduled to launch in October, Hera's main mission is to fly to the binary asteroid system called Didymos, surveying the surface of the smaller asteroid in the duo named Dimorphos. Dimorphos, as you might recall, was part of NASA's DART mission, a planetary defense test that saw a spacecraft intentionally crash into the asteroid. The goal was to see if the impact could alter Dimorphos' trajectory around its larger companion, Didymos, mimicking a possible scenario in which a spacecraft could alter the trajectory of an asteroid that threatens Earth someday. In short, it was a success. But first, during its two-year cruise to Didymos, Hera will test its science instruments during a Martian flyby.