Watch video: NASA's Perseverance rover captures stunning footage of Solar eclipse on Mars

Watch video: NASA's Perseverance rover captures stunning footage of Solar eclipse on Mars

The tiny Martian moon Phobos looms large on the sun's face in dramatic eclipse footage captured by NASA's Perseverance rover

FPJ Web DeskUpdated: Thursday, April 21, 2022, 12:47 PM IST
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NASA's Perseverance Rover on the Martian surface | NASA

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars' potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon's orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet's crust and mantle.

Captured with Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds – much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth’s Moon. Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.

The tiny Martian moon Phobos looms large on the sun's face in dramatic eclipse footage captured by NASA's Perseverance rover.

The life-seeking Perseverance took a break April 2 from its quest to reach an ancient Red Planet river delta (its successful arrival there was announced yesterday) to observe the minuscule moon passing across the sun.

Phobos is in a death spiral over Mars and will likely crash into the Red Planet's surface in a few tens of millions of years, researchers say.

Roughly 20 years of eclipse observations like this, taken from rovers on Mars, have refined the understanding of that moon's slowly collapsing orbit.

We're also learning more about the structure of Mars from such observations. "As Phobos circles Mars, its gravity exerts small tidal forces on the Red Planet's interior, slightly deforming rock in the planet's crust and mantle. These forces also slowly change Phobos' orbit," JPL officials said in the statement.

"As a result," they added, "geophysicists can use those changes to better understand how pliable the interior of Mars is, revealing more about the materials within the crust and mantle."

Perseverance is on a years-long quest to hunt for signs of ancient life on Mars, and to collect and cache dozens of samples that may hold evidence of Red Planet organisms. NASA and the European Space Agency plan to return those samples to Earth via a sample-return campaign over the next decade or so.

Accompanying Perseverance on its journeys is an drone helicopter, Ingenuity. The diminutive chopper has exceeded its planned flight manifest fivefold, achieving 25 airborne sorties to date.

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