Even as India continues to celebrate the success of Chandrayaan-3, Mangalyaan, the country’s Mars probe launched in November 2013, has captured stunning videos of Phobos, the larger of the Red Planet’s two moons.
In the videos, shared by space enthusiast Andrea Luck on X (earlier Twitter), Phobos in seen passing over Mars.
Luck used scientific data archive from Mangalyaan to process the clip.
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 has been orbiting the Red Planet since September 2014. India’s maiden interplanetary mission, it made the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) 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).