NASA showed a video of a solar eclipse on Mars

The American space agency released a video made with the Perseverance rover that shows a solar eclipse on Mars. The footage shows the eclipse with the greatest accuracy and video frame rate to date.

It was not a total eclipse, it was a partial eclipse. Against the backdrop of the sun’s disc, Phobos passed. It is a small moon from Mars with dimensions of 26.8 x 21 x 18.4 km and a shape similar to a potato. The eclipse lasted just over 40 seconds.

The video released this week was recorded with the Mastcam-Z on April 2, the 397th Martian day of the Perseverance mission.

These are not the first recordings of a solar eclipse on Mars. For example, in 2004, the rovers Spirit and Opportunity acquired a timelapse of a solar eclipse. The Curiosity rover also once recorded a video of the eclipse. The latest footage from Perseverance, however, shows the eclipse with the greatest accuracy and video frame rate.

Another factor that makes Perseverance recording unique is the color. Mastcam-Z has a sunscreen that acts like a pair of sunglasses to reduce the intensity of the sun’s glare. Mark Lemmon, a scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder (Colorado, USA) who observes Phobos from Mars rovers, emphasizes that the film even shows details in the shape of Phobos’s shadow resulting from the landscape on its surface, as well as sunspots.

Eclipse observations will help scientists better understand Phobos’ orbit and even the interior of Mars. As the tiny moon orbits Mars, its gravity exerts a slight tidal force on the planet’s interior, which deforms the rocks in Mars’ crust and mantle slightly. These forces are also slowly changing Phobos’ orbit. As a result, geophysicists can use the analysis of these changes to better understand how flexible the interior of Mars is and what the properties of materials in the planet’s crust and mantle are.

One day Martian solar eclipses by Phobos will end, because the fate of the moon is doomed. It is approaching the surface of the planet and will hit it in tens of millions of years.

The Perseverance rover was launched from Earth on July 30, 2020. He landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 in Jezero Crater, while recording the entire operation from multiple cameras. These were the first such videos of a landing on an alien planet.

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