October 15, 2014
Almost 20 days after it successfully entered the orbit of the Red Planet, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter on Tuesday sent pictures of Phobos — the largest of the two natural satellites that orbit around Mars.
October 15, 2014
Almost 20 days after it successfully entered the orbit of the Red Planet, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter on Tuesday sent pictures of Phobos — the largest of the two natural satellites that orbit around Mars.
Phobos, the larger of the two moons circling Mars, shows hundreds of craters of varying sizes in this view from the Viking-1 orbiter. Photo: The Hindu Archives
ISRO, the national space agency, has shared a tiny footage on its social networking site with a caption, “The larger of the two Martian moons, Phobos, is seen travelling west to east over Mars in its typical orbit.”
The images were taken from an altitude of 66,275 km above the surface of the Red Planet, it said.
Phobos along with the Mars’ another natural satellite Deimos was discovered by mankind in 1877.
According to NASA, Phobos, which is 27 by 22 by 18 km in diameter orbits the red planet three times a day.
Phobos was nearing Mars at a rate of 1.8 m every hundred years and at that rate, it would either crash into the red planet in 50 million years or break up into a ring, according to the US national space agency.
Courtesy: PTI
