The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft captured a rare event in space thanks to its prime location in the orbit of Mars.
The small spacecraft, located more than 100 million km (62 million miles) from Earth, was able, thanks to its presence at the right time and place, to monitor the instant of Mars’ moon Deimos, the smaller moon of the red planet and the solar system, it passed in front of Jupiter and its four major moons, the moons of Galileo.
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Scientists say celestial alignments like this allow for more accurate determination of the orbits of Mars’ moons.
While observing the Red Planet, the Mars Express spacecraft captured the eclipse, when the distance between Mars and its giant neighbor, Jupiter, was estimated to be 745 million km.
For a few brief moments, Deimos and the Invading Titan seemed to be a happy family.
On February 14, 2022, the alignment of these two astronomical objects was captured by the camera, in a series of 80 images combined in a video clip.
“Such an alignment is very unusual because Deimos must be exactly in the orbital plane of Jupiter’s moons for the alignment to occur,” the European Space Agency wrote in a statement.
The video shows the Mars moon Deimos, only 15km long, slowly moving across the screen from left to right as it passes, obscuring the icy moon Europa and the giant moon Ganymede, which appear as two small star-like dots in the dome. of the sky as we see them from Earth, therefore the disk of a Buyer planet. It is followed by the volcanic moon Io. Finally, Callisto, the second largest moon of Jupiter.
These observations allowed Mars scientists to more accurately measure Deimos ‘position and orbit, which is difficult to do from Earth, as Mars’ moons are very small and faint. Understanding their orbits may be the key to understanding where they come from.
It is unclear whether Deimos and the largest moon, Phobos, were ever part of a crashed larger body or two passing asteroids dragged by the gravity of Mars.
Better characterization of the orbits of Mars’ moons will allow scientists to better model what will happen to them in the future as well.
Phobos is currently slowly making its way to Mars, so scientists believe that within the next 100 million years it will be very close to Mars and the gravity of the good will tear apart the moon, resulting in a temporary ring of Phobos around the planet.
On the other hand, Deimos is slowly moving away from Mars. Scientists believe that if it continues in this direction, it will eventually escape the gravitational grip of Mars and make its way through the great and vast solar system.
