Abha Jain is a freelance science writer. She did a masters degree in biology, specializing in neuroscience, from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India, and is almost through with a bachelor's degree in archaeology from the University of Leicester, UK.
Mars' moon Phobos may actually be a comet — or at least part of one — that was gravitationally captured by the Red Planet long ago, a new preprint study based on previously unpublished photos suggests.
Figuring out exactly how Phobos was born is one of the aims of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Martian Moons eXploration mission, slated to launch in 2026. Sonia Fornasier, an astronomy professor at the Paris Cité University and lead author of the new study, is an instrument scientist for the MMX mission. While she and other scientists were analyzing images to fine-tune the spacecraft's planned path, Fornasier stumbled upon unpublished photos.
Fornasier and her colleagues used the snapshots to analyze the intensity of sunlight Phobos reflected from different angles. This technique, called photometry, allowed them to determine how much light Phobos reflected when the sun was right in front or at an offset angle. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Both these properties are also features of Jupiter-family comets, which are comets whose orbits are gravitationally tweaked by Jupiter. These include the"rubber ducky" Comet 67P, which ESA's Rosetta mission studied up close in 2016. In fact, Phobos' photometric properties matched Comet 67P's almost perfectly.
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