Space expert shares stunning videos of Phobos, the Martian moon. Thank you, Mangalyaan

Even as India continues to celebrate the success of Chandrayaan-3, space expert Andrea Luck has shared stunning videos of Phobos, the larger of the Red Planet’s two moons.

These were processed by Luck with scientific data archive from Mangalyaan, India’s probe to Mars launched in November 2013. He uploaded the clips to his X (formerly Twitter) handle as well.

In the videos, Phobos is seen passing over a cloudy Mars.

Phobos and Deimos

According to NASA, the two Martian moons – Phobos and Deimos – were discovered by the US astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, and are believed to be captured asteroids. The former, as per NASA, is closer to and orbits the planet three times a day, and is nearing it at rate of 6 feet (1.8 metres) every 100 hundred years.

It is, therefore, likely to crash into Mars in 50 million (5 crore) years, says the US space agency.

Deimos, on the other hand, orbits every 30 hours.

Mangalyaan

Officially the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and informally Mangalyaan (in Sanskrit, ‘Mangal’ means Mars, and ‘yaan’/’yana’, a vehicle), it began orbiting the Red Planet in September 2014. India’s maiden interplanetary mission, it reached its ‘end of life’ in October last year after

With Mangalyaan, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)became only the fourth space agency to send a spacecraft to the Mars orbit. The others are NASA, Roscosmos (Russia) and the European Space Agency (ESA).