Phobos Flyby

Check out this photo.  The rock in the center frame is Phobos, one of Mars' moons.  The photo is curtsey of the Mars Express orbiter, skimming the surface at a mere 28 miles!

Why?  Well the ten year old orbiter was helping scientists to determine the density of the moon.  One unfortunate thing is, no cameras were in use at the time because of the orbiter's orientation, but this week it did make a 300 mile pass which did have cameras pointed at the moon.

If you think the photo here is spectacular, take note.....it was taken at over 4000 miles.  Yes, we are going to have some spectacular results once the data is transmitted to Earth.

For more.....check out the Dvice image of the day  HERE 

Russians Plan Mission to Phobos

No question about it, the Russians are fascinated with Mars' moon Phobos and it would seem not without good reason.

The Russian space program has plans to visit the diminutive satellite some time around 2020 to hopefully solve some very nagging questions about the moon's makeup. 

One of the most nagging questions concerning Phobos is it's extremely low density.  Scientists have speculated that the low density is due to ice in its interior or possibly  is it due to Phobos being completely fragmented. A huge pile of rubble with voids throughout the moon.  

A recent study showed that the surface of Phobos contains tons of dust, soil, and rock blown off the Martian surface by large projectile impacts. Phobos, it would appear, has been  gathering Martian debris for millions of years.

The Phobos mission also has a goal of returning Mars surface material to Earth, but this is not the first time the Russian space program has attempted to do so.   The Russian mission will be the space agency's second attempt to return a sample from Phobos.  The first try was launched in 2011, but an engine failure stranded the spacecraft in Earth orbit.

Read the complete The Daily Galaxy article HERE

Russian Grunt Update

From the Daily Galaxy Blog:

• The European Space Agency (ESA) announced that they will attempt to contact the stranded Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft that became stuck at a low-Earth orbit due to engine failure that followed its launch on November 9.....

One of the problems, according to the blog article is that:

• The Russians could not decipher the information from the ESA’s Australian station
• 
  The telemetry showed that the radio equipment in Phobos was in operational and was exchanging information with the main flight computer and the on-board control system. Observations from Earth have indicated that the orbit of Phobos-Grunt had become more stable

Manfred Warhaut, ESA's Head of Mission Operations at the European Space Operations Center has said that "This could mean that the spacecraft's attitude, or orientation, is also now stable, which could help in regaining contact because we'd be able to predict where its two antennas are pointing,"

More on the ESA's attempt here

Image is of the purposed Phobos landing site of the Grunt probe

Russian Phobos Grunt - Off the Mark, Possibly Finished?

According to BBC news online via The Daily Galaxy blog, Russian space agency reports that shortly after launch, the Phobos Grunt probe failed to fire its' mains to launch it towards Mars and is now:

• stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.

The probe's mission was to collect rock and dust samples from Mars' moon Phobos and bring them back for study in labs on Earth.

• The venture is also significant because it is carrying China's first Mars satellite. Yinghuo-1 is riding piggyback on Phobos-Grunt.

Possible reason for the failure to fire may be due to the probe not being able to:

• orientate itself in space using the stars, failed to pick them up and therefore did not execute the firings as planned.

BBC news article here

Mars Has a Monolith?!

Or more accurately Mars' moon Phobos has a structure photographed on it's surface that looks suspiciously like one. This is according to an article in the Daily Galaxy here and of course on the suggestion of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

From the Daily Galaxy article:

• ... Aldrin, ... alluded to a monolith detected on Mars' moon Phobos. (Aldrin said) "We should visit the moons of Mars. There's a monolith there - a very unusual structure on this little potato shaped object that goes around Mars once every seven hours. 'When people find out about that they are going to say, "Who put that there? "

Who indeed, check out the photo and click the link for the complete story.

3d Phobos photo!

The ESA spacecraft Mars Express took this and other stunning images of Mars' moon Phobos
on March 7 2010 using the on-board High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) .

With this photo, there are also several excellent high resolution and 3d pictures as well.

Check out the article on the ESA space science online site here

Phobos' days may be numbered

According to an article in IO9 Mars' two moons once had company. Astronomers studying two oddly elliptical craters on Mars' surface just north of Olympus Mons have theorized that Mars once had a third moon. This moon would have been small by any standards at 1.5 kilometers. The impact zone is two oval craters that lie 7.8 miles apart and they are almost exactly aligned from east to west. Most impact craters are round, so the oval craters indicate that 1 or 2 objects struck Mars at a very oblique angle. The double impact could indicate that the impactor broke up under gravitational shear or stresses encountered when striking the atmosphere. Of course it could also have been a binary asteroid which has president in other impacts on other moons in the solar system. Which brings us to diminutive Phobos. The moon is slowly dropping in altitude due to tidal forces. In about 11 million years it will either crash into Mars or be ripped apart through gravitational shear.

<- IO9 article -> <- Universe Today odd Martian crater article ->

ESA & Mars Express closer to decerning origin of Phobos

European space scientists are getting closer to unravelling the origin of Mars’ larger moon, Phobos. Thanks to a series of close encounters by ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, the moon looks almost certain to be a ‘rubble pile’, rather than a single solid object. Mars' largest moon is an irregularly sized lump of space rock measuring just 27 km x 22 km x 19 km. Recent passes by Mars Express have allowed teams of European scientists to determine both the mass and volume of Phobos. Putting this data together, the teams will be able to calculate the moon's density. Eventually, this will be a new important clue to how the moon formed. Preliminary density calculations suggest that it is just 1.85 grams per cubic centimetre. This is lower than the density of the martian surface rocks, which are 2.7-3.3 grams per cubic centimetre, but very similar to that of some asteroids. The particular class of asteroids that share Phobos’ density are known as D-class. They are believed to be highly fractured bodies containing giant caverns because they are not solid. Instead, they are a collection of pieces, held together by gravity. Scientists call them rubble piles. This suggests that Phobos, and probably its smaller sibling Deimos, are captured asteroids. The only problem with this scenario is that captured asteroids have erratic obits, but Phobos and Demos have equatorial orbits that seem to contradict the asteroid conclusion. To clear up the question of where the moons came from would require samples of the moon's surface. This possibility might soon become reality because the Russians will attempt to do this with the Phobos-Grunt mission, (I couldn't make this up if I tried!) to be launched next year.

Orbiter's close-ups of Martian moon Phobos

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to take the sharpest images ever of the Martian moon Phobos. This image, taken about 4,200 miles from the moon, shows an area of about 13 miles wide. The most prominent feature on the moon is the Stickney crater (right) which is about 5.6 miles in diameter. Scientists believe that the bluish area on the edge of the Stickney crater indicates a younger area of the moon.

click on article title for more pictures

Mars's tiny moons – one small step for mankind?

Forget Mars – the Red Planet's moons Phobos and Deimos could be the next stop in the solar system for humanity, according to planetary scientists. During a recent conference at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, in California, Scientists speculated that astronauts could make their first footprints on one of them within 10 years. As a counterpoint to a return mission to Earth's moon, some scientists believe that a manned mission returning to the moon is counter productive. Plus a robotic mission to either of Mars' moons is easier than one to Luna.

Granted, the Moon is only a short three-day spaceflight from Earth, whereas Phobos and Deimos are several months away using current propulsion methods.

But the Moon's gravity is one-sixth Earth's, strong enough that a landing craft has to fire retrorockets to slow its descent to the surface, and again to leave. This wastes tonnes of heavy, expensive fuel and adds millions of dollars to the cost of a mission.

Mars' two potato-shaped worlds, on the other hand, are tiny – Phobos is the size of Manhattan and Deimos is about a third as large, just 6.3 kilometres wide. So their gravitational pull is only one-thousandth that of Earth, making landing on them more like docking with another spaceship.

Estimates put a robotic or manned mission to Mars' moons at a tenth of the cost of a moon or Mars mission. Plus there are many unknowns about the makeup and origins of both of Mars' moons that such missions could help answer. Scientists have theorised that the moons may be asteroids captured by Mars's gravity, or that they may be remnants of a single moon that was blasted apart by a massive impact. But until we have missions that target these bodies, we will always have questions.

This image of Phobos, taken by Europe's Mars Express spacecraft from a distance of less than 200 km, shows the Mars-facing side of the moon (Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/G Neukum)

Thanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post

Russia, China aim for Red Planet

China will launch a joint mission with Russia to Mars, a "milestone" in space co-operation between the two countries. The move follows pledges by Moscow to work more closely with the Chinese on missions to Mars and the Moon. A small satellite developed by China will piggyback on the Russian launch of a spacecraft called "Phobos Grunt", probably in October 2009. There was no mention of a timetable in the Chinese space agency statement. But earlier Russian reports said the launch window for the 10-11 month voyage to Phobos, Mars' largest moon, will be in October 2009. The mission plan so far is to have the Russian craft orbit Mars. Then the Chinese micro-satellite will detach from the Russian spacecraft, and probe the Martian space environment. The Russian spacecraft will touch down on the Martian moon Phobos and collect soil samples for return to Earth.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders