Why 'Super Weird' Mars Moons Phobos and Deimos Fascinate Scientists Despite Being Tiny Space Potatoes
Mars is the darling of many planetary scientists, who continue to visit it through increasingly advanced robotic explorers. "They’re super weird, confusing and interesting," said Abigail Fraeman, a planetary scientist studying Mars, Phobos and Deimos at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Remote observations of their surfaces haven’t revealed any standout mineral features or textures that could definitively detail the moons’ overall compositions and, ultimately, their origins, said Laura Kerber, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "They check all of the boxes that are consistent with them being these captured asteroids,” said Fraeman — rubbly patchworks that drifted too close to Mars long ago and became trapped in the planet’s orbit. It’s difficult to capture an asteroid and have it “wind up in this beautiful, symmetric, circular orbit,” said Jeffrey Plaut, the project scientist for the Mars Odyssey mission.
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