Flying closely can give scientists clues to the history of the Red Planet's largest moon.
so that it would be used more than 155 miles away from the surface of Mars, or the typical distance between the Red Planet’s surface and the spacecraft. A major software upgrade allows the Mars Express to travel closer to a celestial body’s surface. This update could shed light on the moon Phobos’ mysterious origin by peering inside the moon.
“During this flyby, we used MARSIS to study Phobos from as close as [about 51 miles],” Andrea Cicchetti from the MARSIS team at INAF said. “Getting closer allows us to study its structure in more detail and identify important features we would never have been able to see from further away. In future, we are confident we could use MARSIS from closer than [about 24 miles].
The MARSIS instrument on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft uses its recently upgraded software to peer beneath the surface of the martian moon Phobos.
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