NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Lumpy Martian Moon Resembling An Odd Potato
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
While watching clouds from the Martian surface, NASA’s Perseverance rover caught a glimpse of one of the two moons of the Red Planet, and recorded it in a timelapse video.
Named Deimos, the lumpy celestial body measures just 7.5 miles across, thus appearing as a speck in the evening Martian sky. In spite of its odd shape, the space spud is the tinier and “less irregular” of Mars’ two moons.
Deimos is dark and reddish in color, and is relatively smooth thanks to a blanket of fragmental rock. It takes roughly 30 hours to orbit Mars.
The footage was captured unintentionally while the rover was tasked to watch the planet’s clouds. Perseverance’s main duties, though, include searching for signs of ancient life and collecting rock samples from the Martian surface.
Sky watching is fun no matter where you are. I took this short time lapse movie to watch for clouds, and caught something else: look closely and you’ll see Deimos, one of two moons of Mars.
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) August 20, 2021
More on this tiny moon: https://t.co/TzHMc0aIS3 pic.twitter.com/akfbhfsw33
[via Mashable, cover image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona]
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