Phobos Archives

January 9, 2025January 9, 2025 by David Dickinson

The Moon Occults Mars for North America Monday Night, Just Before Opposition 2025

Now is the best time to observe Mars in 2025.

January has an amazing parade of evening planets, well worth braving the cold for. We have brilliant Venus, high to the west after sunset, reaching greatest elongation on January 10^th. Fainter Saturn sits just above Venus as the two meet on January 19^th. Meanwhile, Jupiter dominates the eastern sky, fresh off of opposition in December. But stay awake just a bit longer after dusk, and you can see Mars rising in the east.

As a special treat, observers in most of North America will also see the nearly Full Moon pass in front of Mars Monday night.

November 30, 2024November 30, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

A CubeSat Mission to Phobos Could Map Staging Bases for a Mars Landing

The moons of Mars are garnering increased attention, not only because they could provide a view of the solar system’s past but also because they could provide invaluable staging areas for any future human settlement on Mars itself. However, missions specifically designed to visit Phobos, the bigger of the two moons, have met with varying stages of failure. So why not make an inexpensive mission to do so – one that could launch multiple copies of itself if necessary? That’s the idea behind a CubeSat-based mission to Phobos, known as Perseus, which was initially described back in 2020.

September 18, 2024September 18, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Did Mars Once Have a Third, Larger Moon?

Mars with its two moons Phobos and Deimos

We are all familiar with our one Moon but other planets have different numbers of moons; Mercury has none, Jupiter has 95 and Mars has two. A new paper proposes that Mars may actually have had a third larger moon. Why? The red planet has a triaxial shape which means it bulges just like Earth does but along a third axis. The paper suggests a massive moon could have distorted Mars into this shape.

June 4, 2024June 4, 2024 by Evan Gough

How Mars’ Moon Phobos Captures Our Imaginations

This is a colourized version of a black and white image captured by the ESA's Mars Express in 2010. Andrea Luck, a skilled image processor from Glasgow, improved the original image. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY. Original Image: https://www.planetary.org/space-images/20130714_phobosnd_img

For a small, lumpy chunk of rock that barely reflects any light, Mars’ Moon Phobos draws a lot of attention. Maybe because it’s one of only two moons to orbit the planet, and its origins are unclear. But some of the attention is probably because we have such great images of it.

March 7, 2024March 7, 2024 by Evan Gough

Perseverance Sees Phobos, Deimos and Mercury Passing in Front of the Sun

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture the silhouette of Phobos, the larger of Mars' pair of moons, as it passed in front of the Sun on Feb. 8, 2024, the 1,056th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI

NASA’s Perseverance rover is busy exploring the Martian surface and collecting samples for eventual return to Earth. But the rover recently took some time to gaze upward and observe the heavens. Using Mastcam-Z, the rover’s primary science camera, Perseverance captured Phobos, Deimos, and Mercury as they transited in front of the Sun.

November 29, 2023November 29, 2023 by Matt Williams

Odyssey Gives Us a Cool New View of Mars

This unusual view of the horizon of Mars was captured by NASA’s Odyssey orbiter using its THEMIS camera, in an operation that took engineers three months to plan. It’s taken from about 250 miles above the Martian surface – about the same altitude at which the International Space Station orbits Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Chances are that you’ve seen images of Earth from space, thanks to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), who regularly share stunning photos of our planet. These images provide us regularly with breathtaking views of cities, oceans, storms, eruptions, clouds, the curvature of the planet, and the way the atmosphere glows against the horizon. Thanks to NASA’s Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which has been in orbit for over 22 years, we now have an equally breathtaking view of Mars from orbit that captured what its curvature and atmosphere look like from space.

November 17, 2022November 17, 2022 by Evan Gough

JAXA’s Ambitious Mission to Phobos Will Even Have European-Built Rover

Phobos, a moon of Mars. — Japan is sending a spacecraft to Phobos to study it and collect samples for return to Earth. A German rover will be part of the fun. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Japan and Germany have a history of collaboration in scientific and technological endeavours. The countries have a Joint Committee on Cooperation in Science Technology that has met many times over the decades. Both countries have advanced, powerful economies and sophisticated technological know-how, so it makes sense they’d collaborate on scientific activities.

This time, their cooperation concerns a small, potato-shaped chunk of rock: Mars’ moon Phobos.

October 13, 2022October 13, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Mars Express Watched Deimos Pass in Front of Jupiter and its Moons

That’s no moon … wait … yes, it is, and more!

ESA’s Mars Express has captured an unusual and rare occultation, all from its vantage point in orbit of Mars. The spacecraft’s orbit brought it to the right place where it could witness the moment Mars’ small moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. Scientists say that celestial alignments like these enable a more precise determination of the Martian moons’ orbits.

August 20, 2022August 20, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

New Pics of Phobos From China’s Tianwen-1 Orbiter

Two fundamental factors affect all astrophotography – timing and location. If a camera happens to be at the right place at the right time, it can capture images that have never been seen before. And with the proliferation of cameras throughout the solar system, more and more novel photos will be captured at an ever-increasing frequency. China’s Tianwen-1 probe added to that novel collection to celebrate its second anniversary by taking a shot of Mars’ moon Phobos.

June 15, 2022June 15, 2022 by Evan Gough

Japan’s Upcoming Mission Will Use a Vacuum to Get its Sample From Phobos

The Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission (courtesy: JAXA/NASA).

JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is carving out a niche for itself in sample-return missions. Their Hayabusa mission was the first mission to sample an asteroid when it brought dust from the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. Then its successor, Hayabusa 2, brought back a sample from asteroid Ryugu in 2020.

Now JAXA has the Martian moon Phobos in its sights and will send a spacecraft to sample it as soon as 2024. The mission is called Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), and it’ll use a pneumatic vacuum device to collect its samples.