Stunning new views of Deimos, one of Mars’ two strange moons, hint at questions about how the martian moons formed in the first place — and why they are still in orbit around Mars today. These questions have perplexed scientists since the discovery of the martian moons Phobos and Deimos almost 150 years ago.
The latest photographs are from the United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft, a robotic probe that has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2021. On March 10, the Hope obiter made its first of several proposed flybys of the smaller moon Deimos, which is only 7.7 miles (12.4 kilometers) wide. Following the flyby, Hope sent back photographs of Deimos’ farside, which has never been seen up-close before.
Hope got as close to Deimos as anyone (or anything) is likely going to get for a while. “This was approximately 100 kilometers [62 miles] up, and I don’t believe we will get that close again,” Hessa Al Matroushi, the science lead for the Emirates Mars Mission, tells Astronomy.
During additional flybys of Deimos planned for later this year, “we’re going to get to around 200 kilometers [124 miles], and that’s still pretty good data,” she says. “That will help us understand the moon.”
Are Phobos and Deimos captured asteroids?
The mission to take the new photos of Deimos, with Mars looming large in the background, allowed the probe’s two spectrometers to record crucial data about the moon’s composition.
