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Mars has an orbit with a semimajor axis of 1.524 astronomical units (228 million km) (12.673 light minutes), and an eccentricity of 0.0934. [1] [2] The planet orbits the Sun in 687 days [3] and travels 9.55 AU in doing so, [4] making the average orbital speed 24 km/s.
Despite its 30-hour orbit, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars. Both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face towards Mars. Since Phobos orbits Mars faster than the planet itself rotates, tidal forces are slowly but steadily decreasing its orbital radius.
[2] [1] The sensitivity is such that RISE can also detect the rotation changes caused by the seasonal redistribution of carbon dioxide (CO 2) ice as it sublimates in the summer and condenses at the poles, causing tiny changes in the rotation rate of Mars, translating into a variation in the length of its days. [3] [5]
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
Unlike Phobos, which orbits so fast that it rises in the west and sets in the east, Deimos rises in the east and sets in the west, slower than Mars's rotation speed. The Sun-synodic orbital period of Deimos of about 30.4 hours exceeds the Martian solar day (" sol ") of about 24.7 hours by such a small amount that 2.48 days (2.41 sols) elapse ...
Mars spins a little more quickly each year, according to data collected by NASA’s now-retired InSight lander. ... The instruments were used to track Mars’ rotation during the mission’s first ...
Most minor planets have rotation periods between 2 and 20 hours. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] As of 2019 [update] , a group of 887 bodies – most of them are stony near-Earth asteroids with small diameters of barely 1 kilometre – have an estimated period of less than 2.2 hours.
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