If humanity moved to Mars in the future, it would lose a romantic night view of the moon. The planet Mars has two moons, but they don’t look like ours at all. Their irregular shape is a great mystery to astronomers. And then there’s something else. One of the moons is slowly approaching Mars and one day it collides with it.
The moons of Mars are already frightening with their names. Phobos means “terror” in Greek, Deimos translates as “horror”. They look more like potatoes than spherical spheres, and scientists originally thought they were not moons at all, but asteroids bound by gravity to the red planet. In such a case, however, their trajectory would be expected to have a random slope and shape, which has not been confirmed. Both Phobos and Deimos describe almost exemplary circles in the plane of Mars’ equator.
Mysterious origin
Researchers at the University of Zurich calculated how the orbits of the two bodies had changed in the past, and came to an interesting finding: the moons had long ago orbited Mars in the same orbit. “It is likely that it was originally a single body, a single moon. But it was then hit by another object and disintegrated as a result of the collision. Phobos and Deimos are therefore the remnants of this lost moon,” explained study director Amirhossein Bagheri.
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Phobos orbits Mars in just 8 hours and its size is about a third of our moon. An observer standing on the Martian surface would see him rise in the west and set back in the east right after four hours. Very often he would also witness his crossing of the Sun.
The solar eclipse of the moon Mars beautifully captures the following video:
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Source: Youtube
The smaller and more distant Deimos is visible from Mars only as a point of light and is not so interesting for astronomers. The main attraction is Phobos, whose orbit approaches the home planet by 1.8 cm every year. Between 10 and 50 million years, it will hit the surface of Mars. This event should not be of major importance to Earth, although it is possible that the collision will send unexpected asteroids into our orbit that could theoretically endanger life on our planet – depending on their size and route.
Life on Mars in danger
However, if humanity had settled Mars by then, the consequences for the local population would have been dire. With dimensions of 27×18 km, Phobos will do much more damage on the Martian surface than the asteroid that once exterminated dinosaurs on our planet.
The moon Phobos confuses astronomers with its strange shape.
However, astronomers are proposing another possible scenario: Phobos will not face Mars directly because it is torn apart by tidal forces just before the impact. From then on, Mars will orbit in the form of a dark ring composed of tiny moon debris and dust. But not even a ring will adorn the red planet forever. Its parts will gradually fall on the surface of Mars unexpectedly and at various angles. Therefore, even this variant will not be favorable for the Martian population.
In 2024, a Japanese spacecraft will be sent to Mars to explore Phobos up close and bring samples of its surface to Earth. Thanks to this, astronomers hope that they will be able to confirm the theory of its origin and specify its future destiny.
Resources: https://scitechdaily.com/, https://www.space.com/, https://astronomy.com/
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