Archive for the 'Phobos Research' Category

Mars Express To Rendezvous with Phobos

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

That’s right! The ESA spacecraft, Mars Express, currently in orbit around Mars will be doing a series of close fly-bys of Mars’ moon Phobos. On July 23rd it will make its closest approach at an altitude above Phobos’ surface of only 97km. I can’t wait to see the close up shots with the High Resolution Stereo Camera and the results from the other instruments aboard Mars Express - these should give some insight into the mass, surface composition and geochemistry of this unusual solar system object.

The full press release from ESA’s website is below…

(more…)

Posted in News - Space & Aeronautics, Phobos Research, Mars Research | No Comments »

Latest Phobos Observations & Results

Thursday, April 10th, 2008
On Easter Sunday, the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged Mars’ moon Phobos up close for the first time. The spectacular images have been released today here and were alluded to about a week ago on the HiRISE Blog. All I can say is WOW! Hopefully these images will assist in solving some of the riddles associated with Phobos’ composition and it’s origin.

Phobos from HiRISE

Here are some of the other images…

Phobos from HiRISE #2 Stickney Crater from HiRISE Phobos from HiRISE #3

I’ve also noticed a few interesting papers and posters that were presented at the recent 39th Lunar & Planetary Sciences Conference related to Phobos. A paper was presented on the PRIME Mission Concept & Mars Sample Return, which I was involved with (see my earlier post), by Pascal Lee and some more work on the recent CRISM observations of Phobos and Deimos. There was also a poster about Mining Technology on Phobos and Deimos that has also sparked some interesting discussions over at The Martian Chronicles. There were also some presentations the Grooves on Phobos and Results from the Hyperspectral Imager on Mars Express. It is great to see lots more research happening.

Posted in News - Space & Aeronautics, Phobos Research | 5 Comments »