NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the silhouette of the Martian moon Phobos because it handed in entrance of the Solar on Sept. 30, 2024. The video presentations the transit sped up via 4 instances, adopted via the eclipse in actual time. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
The tiny, potato-shaped moon Phobos, one among two Martian moons, solid a silhouette because it handed in entrance of the Solar, growing an eye fixed in Mars’ sky.
From its perch at the western wall of Mars’ Jezero Crater, NASA’s Perseverance rover not too long ago spied a “googly eye” peering down from area. The scholar on this celestial gaze is the Martian moon Phobos, and the iris is our Solar.
Captured via the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Sept. 30, the 1,285th Martian day of Perseverance’s challenge, the development happened when the potato-shaped moon handed at once between the Solar and some extent at the floor of Mars, obscuring a big a part of the Solar’s disc. On the identical time that Phobos seemed as a big black disc all of a sudden transferring around the face of the Solar, its shadow, or antumbra, moved around the planet’s floor.
Astronomer Asaph Corridor named the potato-shaped moon in 1877, after the god of concern and panic in Greek mythology; the phrase “phobia” comes from Phobos. (And the phrase for concern of potatoes, and most likely potato-shaped moons, is potnonomicaphobia.) He named Mars’ different moon Deimos, after Phobos’ mythological dual brother.
Kind of 157 instances smaller in diameter than Earth’s Moon, Phobos is best about 17 miles (27 kilometers) at its widest level. Deimos is even smaller.
As a result of Phobos’ orbit is nearly completely in step with the Martian equator and somewhat on the subject of the planet’s floor, transits of the moon happen on maximum days of the Martian yr. Because of its fast orbit (about 7.6 hours to do a complete loop round Mars), a transit of Phobos typically lasts best 30 seconds or so.
This isn’t the primary time {that a} NASA rover has witnessed Phobos blockading the Solar’s rays. Perseverance has captured a number of Phobos transits since touchdown at Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021. Interest captured a video in 2019. And Alternative captured a picture in 2004.
Through evaluating the quite a lot of pictures, scientists can refine their figuring out of the moon’s orbit to be informed the way it’s converting. Phobos is getting nearer to Mars and is expected to collide with it in about 50 million years.
Arizona State College leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z device, running in collaboration with Malin Area Science Techniques in San Diego, at the design, fabrication, checking out, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the College of Copenhagen at the design, fabrication, and checking out of the calibration goals.
A key goal for Perseverance’s challenge on Mars is astrobiology, together with the seek for indicators of historical microbial existence. The rover will represent the planet’s geology and previous local weather, pave the best way for human exploration of the Pink Planet, and be the primary challenge to gather and cache Martian rock and regolith (damaged rock and dirt).
Next NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (Eu Area Company), would ship spacecraft to Mars to gather those sealed samples from the skin and go back them to Earth for in-depth research.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance challenge is a part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration manner, which contains Artemis missions to the Moon that can lend a hand get ready for human exploration of the Pink Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is controlled for the company via Caltech in Pasadena, California, constructed and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For extra about Perseverance:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
2024-150
