The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is in charge of the Perseverance program at NASA, informed about the unique phenomenon on its website.
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The 40-second footage captures the transit of the larger of the two moons of a red planet called Phobos across the sun’s disk. According to JPL, the automatic explorer took the pictures with the “new generation camera” Mastcam-Z on April 2, ie on the 397th Mars Day (408th Earth Day) of its mission on the neighboring planet.
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An “eclipse” on Mars takes much less time than usually occurs on Earth, and the Sun is not completely overshadowed. Phobos is 157 times smaller than the moon.
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“These observations may help scientists better understand the orbit of Phobos and how its gravity acts on the surface of Mars, which in turn forms the crust and mantle of the red planet,” the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained the significance of the video.
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Photographs of solar eclipses on Mars were taken in 2004 by a pair of robotic vehicles NASA Spirit and Opportunity, and later another rover Curiosity continued.
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Overview of NASA’s Mars missions.
But Perseverance has provided the closest video yet of Phobos crossing the star disk of our planetary system. In addition, with the highest frame rate yet.
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Perseverance landed on Mars last February 18 in Lake Crater. According to scientists, 3.5 billion years ago there was water there, and that is why traces of possible former life could be preserved there.
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The mission’s main goal is to look for signs of possible past, not present, life on Mars.
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