Walter Myers/Science Photograph Library
Subsequent to Earth, Mars would be the most-studied world in our photo voltaic system, at the moment residence to a fleet of orbiters, landers and rovers. However above the pink sands on which the rovers trundle, an odd moon rises twice every day. And regardless of all of the scrutiny that Mars itself receives, this moon, Phobos, stays shrouded in thriller.
Phobos and its smaller neighbouring moon, Deimos – each found in 1877 – are two of probably the most perplexing worlds within the photo voltaic system. “They’re the only objects at this stage, in the solar system, for which we have pretty much no idea what they are,” says Pascal Lee on the SETI Institute in California. “We know what other moons are. We know asteroids and comets. Phobos and Deimos? No idea.”
The Martian moons could be captured asteroids, or they might have shaped from the identical disc of primordial planet-stuff as Mars. Maybe they have been cast from a fiery cataclysm just like the collision that crafted Earth’s moon. Or perhaps their origin story is one thing else completely. “What the heck are they?” asks Abigail Fraeman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “I think this is one of the great mysteries of planetary science.”
Now, there may be hope we’d lastly remedy that puzzle, due to a brand new mission to Phobos that’s within the works. Doing so would supply greater than only a satisfying reply: it may additionally open a brand new window on the historical past of the inside photo voltaic system, and maybe level to the supply of life’s constructing blocks on Earth.
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