Latest Deimos Stories

Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Earth has one moon, and it is considerably larger than Pluto. In fact, the relative size of Earth’s moon is quite massive compared to the moons of other planets. We have a fascination with our moon on many levels. But what if Earth had two moons as Mars does? According to NASA, unlike Earth’s moon, Mars moons are two of the smallest in the entire solar system. Mars moons also have proper names: Phobos and Deimos. Their...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online 135 years ago, a scientist named Asaph Hall discovered Phobos and Deimos, two small moons orbiting Mars. Since then, the moons have been photographed innumerable times from Earth and from spacecraft, including recent measurements by the Mars Exploration Rovers panoramic cameras and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbit of Phobos, the inner moon, has been calculated to an accuracy of less than 1 kilometer. But, despite this...

Phobos is the larger and closer of the two natural satellites of Mars. Despite decades of Martian exploration, we still know very little about Phobos. Many fundamental properties of this small potato-shaped body stay vague, for example, its gravitational field. SHI Xian and coauthors from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and Technical University Berlin recently updated working models for the gravitational field of Phobos. Their work, entitled "Working models for the gravitational field of...

Scientists now have firm indications that the Martian satellite Phobos formed relatively near its current location via re-accretion of material blasted into Mars' orbit by some catastrophic event. Two independent approaches of compositional analyses of thermal infrared spectra, from ESA's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Global Surveyor missions, yield very similar conclusions. The re-accretion scenario is further strengthened by the measurements of Phobos' high porosity from the Mars Radio...

On March 3, 2010 Mars Express will make its closest ever approach to Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons. During a series of flybys, spanning six weeks, all seven instruments onboard Mars Express will be utilized to study Phobos. The close approach provides a first opportunity to perform a unique gravity experiment that may reveal the distribution of mass within this intriguing moon. ESA's Mars Express spacecraft orbits the Red Planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it...

For the very first time, the martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together. ESA's Mars Express orbiter took these pioneering images last month. Apart from their "˜wow' factor, these unique images will help the HRSC team validate and refine existing orbit models of the two moons.The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET over period of 1.5...

European space scientists are getting closer to unravelling the origin of Mars' larger moon, Phobos. Thanks to a series of close encounters by ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, the moon looks almost certain to be a "˜rubble pile', rather than a single solid object. However, mysteries remain about where the rubble came from. Unlike Earth, with its single large moon, Mars plays host to two small moons. The larger one is Phobos, an irregularly sized lump of space rock measuring just 27 km x 22...

Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA's Mars Express for a pair of close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, Mars Express will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date. The series of fly-bys will take place between July 12th and August 3rd. During the second encounter, the spacecraft will fly within 273 km of the surface. Six days later, Mars Express will close to within just 97 km. Although the Red Planet itself has...

PASADENA, Calif. "“ A new stereo view of Phobos, the larger and inner of Mars' two tiny moons, has been captured by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took two images of Phobos 10 minutes apart on March 23. Scientists combined the images for a stereo view. "Phobos is of great interest because it may be rich in water ice and carbon-rich materials," said Alfred McEwen, HiRISE principal...