Martian moon Phobos in detail

[Whitters]

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, are Europe’s highest-resolution pictures so far of the Martian moon Phobos.

Read more:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM21TVJD1E_0.html

[Rick]

Mars' moon Phobos could be the target for a technology trial that would seek to return rock samples to Earth.

A UK team is developing a concept mission that aims to land a spacecraft on the potato-shaped object and grab material off its surface.

These small rock fragments would then be despatched to Earth in a capsule.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6324923.stm

[mickw]

One of the best close-ups ever taken of the Martian moon Phobos reveals fresh details of the strange object.
The impact crater named Stickney is the largest feature on Phobos with a diameter of almost 6 miles (9 km). The crater wall textures come from landslides that formed as materials fell in the weak gravity of the moon.

More:  http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080409-phobos-crater.html

[Rick]

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned some rather nice snaps of Martian moon Phobos, captured by the vehicle's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE).

Take a look: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/10/phobos_snaps/

More: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/gallery/press/20080409a.html

[Rick]

Nasa's Mars Reconaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured two stunning images of the Red Planet's biggest moon Phobos.

Stickney Crater, a 9km (5.5 mile) -wide depression that is the largest feature on Phobos dominates the pictures.

The images also show a series of grooves and crater chains; the formation of these features is the subject of debate among scientists.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7340670.stm

[Rick]

Europe's Mars Express spacecraft has returned some remarkable close-up images of the Red Planet's Phobos moon.

The probe passed just 93km from the rock on 23 July, allowing its High Resolution Stereo Camera to take extremely detailed pictures.

Potato-shaped Phobos is 27km in its longest dimension and is thought to be a captured-asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7534300.stm
ESA: http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars_Express/

[Mike]

Imagine standing on one of these objects and looking across the landscape. It must be a bizarre sight.

[Carole]

Its orbit around Mars is dropping by about 1.8m (5.9ft) every 100 years. This means that in 50 million years it will either crash into Mars or break up into a ring.

Shame none of us will be here to see that, especially if it turns into a ring!!!

Carole

[Mike]

I'm sure after a 50 million year wait to see what happens it would be a pretty dissapointing sight.

[Rick]

Images from the recent flyby of Phobos, on 7 March 2010, are released today. The images show Mars' rocky moon in exquisite detail, with a resolution of just 4.4 metres per pixel. They show the proposed landing sites for the forthcoming Phobos-Grunt mission.

ESA's Mars Express spacecraft orbits the Red Planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it close to Phobos every five months. It is the only spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars whose orbit reaches far enough from the planet to provide a close-up view of Phobos.

More: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMK17CKP6G_index_0.html

[mickw]

And todays APOD

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1003/phobos1_marsexpress_big.jpg

[MarkS]

What is the cause of those strange surface striations, I wonder?

[mickw]

The horizontal lines make it look like it was sedimentary

But then there's the craters/indents that look linear - like a fault line

It would be interesting to see if any of the lines continue all the way around.

I think it would be a candidate for being a big rock being broken off a bigger rock

[MarkS]

The horizontal lines make it look like it was sedimentary

But then they cross over the vertical lines ...

[mickw]

In places, they seem to cross each other 

This might shed some light on it - eventually

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt.html

[Rose]

It`s very good with the 3D glasses on.

[Rick]

Some 135 years after its discovery, Mars' largest moon Phobos is seen in fantastic detail – and in 3D – in an image taken by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft as it passed just 100 km by.

In this image, a bite-sized chunk appears to be missing from the right edge of the irregular shaped moon – this is a side-on view of the rim of large impact crater Stickney, so-called after the maiden name of the discoverer's wife.

More: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMDAB1YZ5H_index_0.html

[Rick]

Mars' Moon Phobos is Slowly Falling Apart

The long, shallow grooves lining the surface of Phobos are likely early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon of Mars.

Orbiting a mere 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) above the surface of Mars, Phobos is closer to its planet than any other moon in the solar system. Mars' gravity is drawing in Phobos, the larger of its two moons, by about 6.6 feet (2 meters) every hundred years. Scientists expect the moon to be pulled apart in 30 to 50 million years.

"We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves," said Terry Hurford of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/phobos-is-falling-apart

[Canadian Roger]

I was able to image both Phobos and Deimos in 2003 with a Philips webcam and a Meade 16" SCT a couple of weeks after the great opposition that year.  I tried again in 2005, but only caught Deimos.

I expect it will be a little easier at the opposition in May next year (with Mars about 18 arc-seconds in diameter) due to the vastly improved sensors and software in the intervening years.

[Rick]

Does Mars Have Rings? Not Right Now, But Maybe One Day

As children, we learned about our solar system's planets by certain characteristics -- Jupiter is the largest, Saturn has rings, Mercury is closest to the sun. Mars is red, but it's possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday.

That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock developed a model that suggests that debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping together to form a moon.

More: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6781