The best ever images and observations of Mars’ smallest and kidney bean-shaped moon, Deimos, have been sent back to Earth by the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM)—and they suggest an alternative origin story.
At the red planet since 2021, in late January and early February 2023 EMM’s Hope probe got to within just 62 miles of Deimos—the closest any spacecraft has ever been to the eight miles diameter moon—and even managed to record images of its far-side.
EMM is the first interplanetary mission by an Arab nation.
The result is a unique set of images and data on Deimos, which not only include new data on the moon’s atmosphere, temperature and composition, but also suggest that it’s not a captured asteroid.
For decades it’s been assumed that Demos and Mars’ other moon, Phobos, are D-type asteroids that were captured by the red planet, according to NASA.
Deimos orbits Mars every 30 hours while the larger 13 miles diameter Phobos takes less than eight hours. Both are irregular in shape and both were discovered in 1877. They’re smooth, but covered in craters.
“We are unsure of the origins of both Phobos and Deimos,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, EMM Science Lead. “How exactly they came to be in their current orbits is also an active area of study, and so any new information we can gain on the two moons, especially the more rarely observed Deimos, has the potential to unlock new understanding of Mars’ satellites.”
He said that these new close observations of Deimos so far point to a planetary origin. “Both of these bodies have infrared properties more akin to a basaltic Mars than a D-type asteroid,” said Christopher Edwards, EMIRS Instrument Scientist from the Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Hope’s flyby of Deimos is the closest since NASA’s Viking mission in 1977, which got to within 745 miles, but it won’t be the last. Now in an elliptical orbit of Mars that takes it as close as 12,000 and and as far as 26,000 miles from Mars during a 55-hour orbit, Hope will continue a sustained campaign of Deimos fly-bys throughout 2023, said the UAE Space Agency.
Presenting the new images at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna on April 24, 2023, the UAE Space Agency also revealed that the Hope probe would continue its mission for another year.
Planned to launch next year is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which will visit Phobos and Deimos, land on the surface of Phobos, and collect a surface sample. The sample will be delivered to Earth in 2029.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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