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NASAhas carry a sensational photo of a " outer space white potato " on social media — but it is really Phobos , the Martian moon that is interlock on a slow collision course with the Red Planet .
The space agencyimagedthe lumpy , starchy - look moon using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment ( HiRISE ) camera on board NASA ’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , which has been studying the Red Planet since go far in its orbit in 2006 .
NASA’s snap of Phobos, captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Phobos , named after the Greek god of fear , is approximately 157 times smaller than Earth ’s moon and is one ofMars’two instinctive satellites , alongside the even modest Deimos , whose name issue forth from the Hellenic Supreme Being of dread .
Scientists believe that the brother Sun Myung Moon were once roaming rock and were snare into Mars ' orbital cavity by the planet ’s gravitative field . A late figure of speech analysis of Phobos ' craggy yet highly reflective surface suggested the moonwas once a cometand came from the asteroid belt located between the Red Planet and Jupiter .
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The two moons ' domain are unstable , and scientist predict that in tens of millions of years Deimos will whirl out into infinite while Phobos will either break up into a ring or dig into the Martian surface .
However , with Phobos blow only 6 feet ( 1.8 meter ) closer to Mars every hundred geezerhood , oursolar system’sspace potato is unlikely to be mashed foranother 50 million years , fit in to NASA .
That go forth us with plenty of time to study and admire the stiff ethereal consistency , whose characteristic features include streaks of white ice and the Stickney Crater — a 6 - stat mi ( 10 kilometers ) indent named after Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall , the mathematician and married woman of the two Moon ' discoverer Asaph Hall , who first oberved them in 1877 .
