22.04.2022
These are truly otherworldly shots.
A screenshot from a video showing the Mars moon Phobos crossing the face of the sun. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured the video on April 2, 2022, with its Mastcam-Z camera. You can also spot a group of sunspots on the left. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI)
The tiny Mars moon Phobos looms large on the sun's face in dramatic eclipse footage captured by NASA's Perseverance rover.
The life-seeking Perseverance took a break April 2 from its quest to reach an ancient Red Planet river delta (its successful arrival there was announced yesterday) to observe the minuscule moon passing across the sun.
"These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle," officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Perseverance's mission, said in a statementabout the new eclipse video.
Other Mars rovers, such as NASA's Curiosity, have observed solar eclipses. But the new shots from Perseverance's Mastcam-Z camera provide the most powerful view yet of such an event, featuring a high frame rate not used before on the Martian surface, mission team members said.
"I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be this amazing," Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members, said in the same statement.
Phobos, which is about 157 times smaller than Earth's moon, is one of Mars' two natural satellites. The other, Deimos, is even smaller than Phobos. Scientists think the two lumpy bodies may be former asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravity.
Phobos is in a death spiral over Mars and will likely crash into the Red Planet's surface in a few tens of millions of years, researchers say.
Roughly 20 years of eclipse observations like this, taken from rovers on Mars, have refined the understanding of that moon's slowly collapsing orbit.
We're also learning more about the structure of Mars from such observations. "As Phobos circles Mars, its gravity exerts small tidal forces on the Red Planet's interior, slightly deforming rock in the planet's crust and mantle. These forces also slowly change Phobos' orbit," JPL officials said in the statement.
"As a result," they added, "geophysicists can use those changes to better understand how pliable the interior of Mars is, revealing more about the materials within the crust and mantle."
Past rover missions have caught Phobos and/or Deimos in action across the sun's face. JPL officials pointed to observations of Phobos from NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004, which mission team members stitched into a time-lapse video.
Curiosity's upgraded capabilities allowed the rover to capture solar eclipse videos, and its eclipse observations now number in the dozens. As of 2019, Curiosity, Opportunity and Spirit had collectively observed 40 eclipses by Phobos and eight solar transits by Deimos.
Perseverance's Mastcam-Z has a further upgrade compared to the camera systems of its predecessor rovers: a sunglasses-like filter that reduces the intensity of the sun's light, allowing scientists to see bumps and ridges in the outline of Phobos as well as a group of sunspots on the sun. (The sun has been active all month as a result of sunspots like those.)
Perseverance is on a years-long quest to hunt for signs of ancient life on Mars, and to collect and cache dozens of samples that may hold evidence of Red Planet organisms. NASA and the European Space Agency plan to return those samples to Earth via a sample-return campaign over the next decade or so.
Accompanying Perseverance on its journeys is an intrepid helicopter, Ingenuity. The little chopper has exceeded its planned flight manifest fivefold, achieving 25 airborne sorties to date.
Quelle: SC
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars
The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two moons, to study how its orbit is changing over time.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun. It’s the most zoomed-in, highest-frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars’ potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle.
Captured with Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds – much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth’s Moon. (Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.)
The images are the latest in a long history of NASA spacecraft capturing solar eclipses on Mars. Back in 2004, the twin NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity took the first time-lapse photos of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trendwith videos shot by its Mastcam camera system.
But Perseverance, which landed in February 2021, has provided the most zoomed-in video of a Phobos solar eclipse yet – and at the highest-frame rate ever. That’s thanks to Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera system, a zoomable upgrade from Curiosity’s Mastcam.
“I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing,” said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.
Howson noted that although Perseverance first sends lower-resolution thumbnails that offer a glimpse of the images to come, she was stunned by the full-resolution versions: “It feels like a birthday or holiday when they arrive. You know what’s coming, but there is still an element of surprise when you get to see the final product.”
Color also sets this version of a Phobos solar eclipse apart. Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. “You can see details in the shape of Phobos’ shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon’s landscape,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers. “You can also see sunspots. And it’s cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.”
As Phobos circles Mars, its gravity exerts small tidal forces on the Red Planet’s interior, slightly deforming rock in the planet’s crust and mantle. These forces also slowly change Phobos’ orbit. As a result, geophysicists can use those changes to better understand how pliable the interior of Mars is, revealing more about the materials within the crust and mantle.
Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed: The moon is getting closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the surface of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientists to refine their understanding of Phobos’ slow death spiral.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
Quelle: NASA