New images of Mars’ moon Deimos reveal surprising similarities to the Red Planet

Deimos, the smallest of Mars’ two moons, may be more like Mars than we realize.

The UAE’s Hope spacecraft recently captured new, high-resolution images of the tiny moon. Hope, part of the Emirates Exploration for Mars (EMM) mission, used its onboard instruments to capture never-before-seen views of the space rock.

Mars has two oddly shaped moons – Phobos and Deimos, which measure 17 miles and 9 miles in diameter, respectively. Their strange dimensions, small size, and proximity to the asteroid belt have led scientists to believe that these two rocky bodies are captured asteroids. But thanks to new images of Hope Orbiter, a new theory is emerging.

“We got very high accuracy [images] “Always,” says Hessa Al-Madroushi, head of the science department at the mission.

The images, which were shared at the European Geosciences Union meeting on April 24, help reinforce the idea that Deimos formed around the same time as Mars.

Launched in 2020, the Hope Mars Orbiter will arrive at the Red Planet in 2021 and spend its time studying the Martian atmosphere. Now that its primary science mission is complete, the spacecraft has enough fuel reserves to launch a secondary mission: a closer look at Deimos.

Flying just 60 miles above the surface of Deimos, Hope completed its first flyby of the young moon on March 10. The only spacecraft to come close was NASA’s Viking 2 orbiter in 1977, but it carried more basic cameras and science instruments.

During its initial mission, Hope trained all three of its instruments on Deimos, studying the Moon in different wavelengths and trying to determine its composition. Initial analysis shows that Deimos is more like Mars than the carbon-rich asteroids.

“It looks more like Mars than an asteroid,” says Al-Madraushi, explaining how excited he and his team were when they first saw the images. “Mars was in the background and it was amazing,” he said.

Scientists still aren’t sure how Deimos formed, but they’re pretty sure it looks more like Mars than an asteroid, and very different from Mars’ other moon, Phobos. If the origin of Deimos is an asteroid, Al-Madrushi said, the team did not find an abundance of carbon and organic matter. “If carbon or organic matter is present, we will see spikes at wavelengths,” he said. “But the data is very consistent.”

Like our Moon, Deimos is tidally tethered to Mars, which means that observing the Moon from the planet’s surface or any spacecraft in low orbit around Mars will always see the same side of Deimos. Fortunately for science, Hope has a very long orbit that extends up to 40,000 kilometers above the planet, allowing the Hope spacecraft to observe and photograph the far side of Deimos. These observations will allow the team to analyze the differences between the near and far sides of Deimos to expand what we know about the Moon and Mars.

Al-Madrushi says Hope’s observations of Deimos will continue into 2024, with additional observations of Mars. “We don’t want to look at Deimos just once,” he said. “We knew we wanted more.”