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Credit & Copyright: Viking Project,
JPL,
NASA;
Mosaic Processing: Edwin V. Bell II
(NSSDC/Raytheon ITSS)
Explanation:
This moon is doomed.
Mars,
the red planet named for the
Roman god of war, has two tiny moons,
Phobos and
Deimos, whose
names are derived from the Greek for Fear and
Panic.
The origin of the Martian moons is unknown, though, with a leading
hypothesis holding that they are captured
asteroids.
The larger moon, at 25-kilometers across, is Phobos,
and is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this
false-colored image mosaic taken by the robotic
Viking 1 mission in 1978.
A recent analysis of the unusual long grooves seen on
Phobos indicates that they may result from
boulders rolling away from the giant impact that created the crater on the upper
left:
Stickney Crater.
Phobos
orbits so close to Mars - about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000
kilometers
for our Moon - that gravitational
tidal forces
are dragging it down.
The ultimate result will be for
Phobos to break up in orbit and then crash down
onto the Martian surface in about 50 million years.
Well before that -- tomorrow, in fact, if everything
goes according to plan -- NASA's robotic
InSight lander will touch down on Mars
and begin investigating its internal structure.
Latest:
Insight to Land on Mars Tomorrow
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: Phobos - Mars
Publications with words: Phobos - Mars
See also: