The UAE’s Hope space probe recently captured the first high-resolution images of Mars’ moon Deimos.
Hope flies over Deimos and records its strange form
Hoe flew over Deimos and recorded the strange shape and pitting on the surface of the Mars Moon. (Photo: ƐMirates Mars Mission).
Hessɑ Al Matroushi, ƐMM’s science team leader, said the team was excited about the first images of the 12.4 km-wide moon returned. On April 24, the Al Matroushi group revealed images at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.
Like Earth’s Moon, Seimos is closely tied to its planet, which means that all observations of Mars’ orbit or visible surface to date have only seen one side of the Moon.
The moon Deimos formed from the same material as the red planet, according to new observations.
The moon Ceimos formed from the same material as the red planet, according to new observations. (Photo: Emirates Mars Mission).
But compared to all the missions to have explored the Red Planet, Hope has an unusually long and high orbit, reaching more than 40,000 km above the surface of Mars at its highest point.
It is this orbit that allows the spacecraft to observe Seimos from above and take pictures of the unseen side of the Moon, Al Matroushi explained. However, EMM was unable to image another Mars moon, Phobos, because this object is located less than 10,000 km from the surface of the Red Planet, lower than the lowest point in Mars’ orbit. probe.
During the March 10 flight, the Operation Hope team used the three instruments on board to record Deimos readings ranging from infrared to ultraviolet.
Image of the Mars Moon at the point of closest contact to the spacecraft.
Image of the Mars Moon at the point of closest contact to the spacecraft. (Photo: Emirates Mars Mission).
The relatively flat spectrum obtained shows that this Moon has surface material similar to Mars, and not the carbon-rich rock commonly found in asteroids. This means Deimos was formed from the same material and at the same time as Mars, not a wandering asteroid that fell into the Red Planet’s gravity.
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Hope is a 1.35 ton, $200 million spacecraft that was launched by a Japanese rocket in July 2020 and arrived on Mars in February 2021. The spacecraft regularly observes the atmosphere of Mars, and the main scientific objective is to study the seasonal changes in the atmosphere and the weather conditions of the red planet. Once the mission was complete, while fuel was still available, the crew used the engines to send Hope into an orbit that passed Deimos several times to better study the Moon of Mars. |
Article Source: Zing
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The UAE’s Hope space probe recently captured the first high-resolution images of the Moon…
