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Compared to the Earth's Moon, the moons Phobos and Deimos are small. Phobos has a diameter of 22.2 km (13.8 mi) and a mass of 1.08 × 10 16 kg, while Deimos measures 12.6 km (7.8 mi) across, with a mass of 1.5 × 10 15 kg.
Just like Earth's Moon, both Phobos and Deimos are considerably fainter at non-full phases. Unlike Earth's Moon, Phobos's phases and angular diameter visibly change from hour to hour; Deimos is too small for its phases to be visible with the naked eye. Both Phobos and Deimos have low-inclination equatorial orbits and orbit fairly close to Mars.
The Phobos monolith (right of center, casting long shadow) as taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MOC Image 55103, 1998). The location of the monolith (HiRISE image PIA10368) The Phobos monolith is a large rock on the surface of Mars' moon Phobos. [1] It is a boulder, about 85 m (279 ft) across and 90 m (300 ft) tall.
The mission is called Phobos And Deimos & Mars Environment (PADME). [96] [97] [98] Two other Phobos missions that were proposed for the Discovery 13 selection included a mission called Merlin, which would flyby Deimos but actually orbit and land on Phobos, and another one is Pandora which would orbit both Deimos and Phobos. [99]
A transit of Deimos from Mars lasts a maximum of about two minutes, due to its relatively rapid orbital period of about 30.3 hours. Because they orbit Mars in low-inclination equatorial orbits, the shadows of Phobos or Deimos projected onto the surface of Mars exhibit a seasonal variation in latitude. At any given geographical location on the ...
A transit of Phobos from Mars usually lasts only thirty seconds or so, due to the moon's very rapid orbital period of approximately 7.6 hours. Because Phobos orbits close to Mars and in line with its equator, transits of Phobos occur somewhere on Mars on most days of the Martian year. Its orbital inclination is 1.08°, so the latitude of its ...
Deimos (/ ˈ d aɪ m ə s /; systematic designation: Mars II) [11] is the smaller and outer of the two natural satellites of Mars, the other being Phobos. Deimos has a mean radius of 6.2 km (3.9 mi) and takes 30.3 hours to orbit Mars. [5] Deimos is 23,460 km (14,580 mi) from Mars, much farther than Mars's other moon, Phobos. [12]
While it survived the collision, Phobos remains doomed. The tiny moon is drawing closer to Mars at a rate of 6 feet (1.8 meters) every 100 years, and it will either crash into Mars in 50 million ...