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English: Mars' Moon Phobos Eclipses the Sun - viewed by Curiosity Rover, August 20, 2013. This video clip shows the larger of the two moons of Mars, Phobos, passing directly in front of the sun, in an eclipse photographed by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.
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 ...
With an altitude of 5,989 km (3,721 mi), Phobos orbits Mars below the synchronous orbit radius, meaning that it moves around Mars faster than Mars itself rotates. [23] Therefore, from the point of view of an observer on the surface of Mars, it rises in the west, moves comparatively rapidly across the sky (in 4 h 15 min or less) and sets in the ...
Observers on Mars can view transits of Phobos and transits of Deimos across the Sun. The transits of Phobos could also be called partial eclipses of the Sun by Phobos, since the angular diameter of Phobos is up to half the angular diameter of the Sun. However, in the case of Deimos the term "transit" is appropriate, since it appears as a small ...
Curiosity's view of the Martian moons: Phobos passing in front of Deimos – in real-time (video-gif, 1 August 2013). Speculation about the existence of the moons of Mars had begun when the moons of Jupiter were discovered.
Phobos also takes only 7 hours 39 minutes to orbit Mars, while a Martian day is 24 hours 37 minutes long, meaning that Phobos can create two eclipses per Martian day. These are annular eclipses, because Phobos is not quite large enough or close enough to Mars to create a total solar eclipse. The highest resolution, highest frame rate video of a ...
Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) is a robotic space probe set for launch in 2026 to bring back the first samples from Mars' largest moon Phobos. [3] [5] Developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and announced on 9 June 2015, MMX will land and collect samples from Phobos once or twice, along with conducting Deimos flyby observations and monitoring Mars's climate.
It was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 8 November 2011, along with the Russian Fobos-Grunt sample return spacecraft, which was intended to visit Mars' moon Phobos. [ 2 ] [ 6 ] The 115-kg (250-lb) Yinghuo-1 probe was intended by the CNSA to orbit Mars for about two years, [ 1 ] studying the planet's surface, atmosphere ...