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In 1993, French astronomer Jacques Laskar ran a series of calculations indicating that the gravity of the Moon is vital to stabilizing the tilt of our planet. Earth's obliquity, as this tilt is technically known as, has huge repercussions for climate. Laskar argued that should Earth's obliquity wander over hundreds of thousands of years, it would cause environmental chaos by creating a climate too variable for complex life to develop in relative peace. So his argument goes, we should feel remarkably lucky to have such a large moon on our doorstep, as no other terrestrial planet in our solar system...

Phobos survived a giant impact early in its history, but damage from the crash left the moon weak, say Benjamin Black and Tushar Mittal, planetary scientists with University of California at Berkeley. Their study shows that in 20 million to 40 million years, Phobos will break apart, leaving a cloud of debris that will relatively quickly assembly into a ring around Mars. Initially, the ring will be as dense as Saturn's rings today, and it will last for up to 100 million years, the study shows.

Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits...

One of the most striking features we see on images of Phobos is the parallel sets of grooves on the moon’s surface. They were originally thought to be fractures caused by an impact long ago. But scientists now say the grooves are early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon. "We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves," said Terry Hurford, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. ... Mars' gravity is pulling in Phobos closer by about 2 meters (6.6 feet) every...

Explanation: What does the Martian moon Phobos look like? To better visualize this unusual object, images from ESA's Mars Express orbiter have been combined into a virtual rotation movie. The rotation is actually a digital illusion -- tidally-locked Phobos always keeps the same face toward its home planet, as does Earth's moon. The above video highlights Phobos' chunky shape and an unusually dark surface covered with craters and grooves. What lies beneath the surface is a topic of research since the moon is not dense enough to be filled with solid rock. Phobos is losing about of centimeter of altitude...

After the tragic failure of the first Phobos-Grunt mission to even make it out of low-Earth orbit, the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) is hoping to give it another go at Mars’ largest moon with the Phobos-Grunt 2 mission in 2020. This new-and-improved version of the spacecraft will also feature a lander and return stage, and, if successful, may not only end up sending back pieces of Phobos but of Mars as well. The origins of Phobos have long been a topic of planetary science debate. Did it form with Mars as a planet? Is it a wayward asteroid that ventured...

This post is a conglomeration of several articles, sources of information, on research that I've gathered, circumstances of which can be interpreted, lead to the conclusion of the seeming existence of two monoliths, uncovered in situations unrelated to each other. One of the so-called monolith-shaped objects was discovered by the Mars Global Surveyor in 2009 on the planet Mars, whereas the other so-called monolith-shaped object found located on the Martian moon of Phobos in 2007. I perused through many numerous articles to find the most straight-forward, scholarly, scientifically non-committal, links, sources of information, assiduously avoiding any histrionic, hysteria-driven conspiracy-type sources...

Sol 351 for the Curiosity rover on Mars was a marvelous night for a moon dance. The Mars Science Laboratory rover caught sight of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos together in the sky. And not just one image was captured: the rover’s Mast Camera captured a series of 41 images to allow the MSL team to create this timelapse movie of the dance, where the smaller moon Diemos is occulted by Phobos. To our knowledge, this the first time the two moons have been seen together in any image from the surface of Mars, let alone this sequence of...

Direct Link To VideoYouTube:Curiosity Rover Views Phobos Passing in Front of DeimosThis sped-up movie from the Curiosity rover shows Phobos (the larger of Mars’ two moons) passing in front of smaller Deimos. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Texas A&M Univ. Pasadena, California — The larger of the two moons of Mars, Phobos, passes directly in front of the other, Deimos, in a new series of sky-watching images from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. Large craters on Phobos are clearly visible in these images from the surface of Mars. No previous images from missions on the surface caught one moon eclipsing the other....

Every once in a while when the time is just right and no one is looking, Curiosity’s Earthly handlers allow her some night time Martian delights. In this case a pair of rising and setting celestial events bookend another magnificent week in humankinds exploration of the Red Planet – courtesy of NASA. This past week NASA’s Curiosity rover captured esthetically stunning imagery of Phobos rising and Our Sun setting on Mars.

On March 25, 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on their blog that ESA’s study of the mass of Phobos had been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters. The announcement excerpted startling conclusions of ESA’s findings: “We conclude that the interior of Phobos likely contains large voids. When applied to various hypotheses bearing on the origin of Phobos, these results are inconsistent with the proposition that Phobos is a captured asteroid.” (1,2) Since that time, a number of prominent ancient astronaut blogs have had plenty to say about the findings. The ESA findings were most...

Explanation: Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet's moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This stunning, enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos in March of 2008. Even...

Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits so...

Truly cool! Mars Curiosity rover snapped a bunch of pics while Phobos eclipsed the sun! Youtube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHDH7cKX_SA&feature=player_embedded

Explanation: Hurtling through space above the Red Planet, potato-shaped Phobos completes an orbit of Mars in less than eight hours. In fact, since its orbital period is shorter than the planet's rotation period, Mars-based observers see Phobos rise in the west and set in the east - traveling from horizon to horizon in about 5 1/2 hours. These three images from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft record the oval shadow of Phobos racing over western Xanthe Terra on August 26, 1999. The area imaged is about 250 kilometers across and is seen in panels from left to right as...

A coordinated global campaign is monitoring a wayward Russian Mars probe that's slated to crash to Earth in the next few days, the European Space Agency has announced. The doomed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which Russian officials estimate will re-enter Earth's atmosphere between Saturday and Monday, is now officially a target for the 12-member Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, or IADC for short. "An IADC re-entry prediction campaign is ongoing since Jan. 2. Phobos-Grunt was identified to be no high-risk object," said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the space debris office at the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt,...

Where and when re-entry would occur will not be known until a few days before the event, but the spacecraft is expected to arrive between January 6 and January 19. The landing zone has been calculated between latitude 51.4-N to 51.4-S, which includes the cities of London and Paris.

Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update for Universe Today on the likelihood of saving the mission. The Phobos-Grunt probe is still stuck in orbit around Earth. However, periodically the spacecraft experiences a mysterious slight boost in its orbit. Following the first episode where this occurred, commentators speculated as to the cause. The activation of the spacecraft’s thrusters – the small engines that are designed to steer the craft and make small adjustments – was an obvious answer. Is spacecraft trying to save itself? The...

Mission to Martian moon is the country's first interplanetary attempt since 1996. Eric Hand 04 November 2011 Main Phobos, as seen in 2008 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Article tools Print Email Rights and Permissions Share/bookmark For the first time in 15 years, Russia is getting back into the business of interplanetary space science. It plans to launch an ambitious mission on 8 November to return a sample of soil from the Martian moon Phobos. The Phobos–Grunt mission (which means Phobos-soil) would welcome Russia back to the elite group of nations — the United States, Japan and...

Russia resumes this year the exploration of far-away space, after the interruption that lasted several years. The launching of the interplanetary automatic space station Phobos-Ground is scheduled for October. It is to bring to the Earth rock samples from Phobos, satellite of Mars. The first live organisms from the Earth – some 60 of them – will be on board the space station. The Phobos-Ground is planned to be launched off Baikonur with the help of the Zenit-2SB carrier rocket within the framework of the Ground Launch international programme. It will take the space station 11 months to reach the...