One of the two moons of the planet Mars. It is irregularly shaped, 15 × 12 × 11 km, orbits at a height of 24 000 km every 1.26 days, and is not as heavily cratered as Mars's other moon, Phobos. Deimos was discovered in 1877 by US astronomer Asaph Hall, and is thought to be an asteroid captured by Mars' gravity.
NASA's Viking 2 probe visited Deimos in 1977, flying within 29 km of the Moon's surface and taking detailed photographs of its pitted and boulder-strewn landscape. Since then, the Soviet Phobos 2 mission, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, and the European Mars Express have all provided more clues about the two curious moons, hinting that both might be asteroids.