UAE spacecraft snaps close-up photos of small Mars moon

A spacecraft around Mars has sent back the most detailed pictures yet of the red planet’s tiny moon.

Amal of the United Arab Emirates spacecraft The close-up, which flew within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of Deimos last month, was released Monday. Amal — Arabic for Hope — got the price of two for one when Mars photo-bombed some images. This is the closest a spacecraft has come to Deimos in nearly half a century.

The spacecraft also observed the far side of the oddly shaped, cratered crater moononly 9 miles by 7 miles by 7 miles (15 kilometers by 12 kilometers by 12 kilometers).

Another moon of Mars, Phobos, is nearly twice the size, and because it orbits Mars much closer—only 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) away, it’s the closest moon in the solar system to Earth—so people Knowing it better too.

Deimos’ orbit around Mars stretches 14,000 miles (23,000 kilometers). This is close to the interior of the spacecraft’s orbit — “that’s what makes observing Deimos such a compelling idea,” said Hessa al-Matroushi, the mission’s chief scientist.

“Phobos has gotten the most attention by far – now it’s Deimos’ turn!” she added in an email.

Al-Matroushi and other scientists at the UAE Space Agency say the new images suggest that Deimos is not an asteroid that was captured in orbit around Mars long ago, the leading theory until now. Instead, they say the Moon appears to have originated on Mars — possibly from a larger Martian moon or from Mars itself.

The findings were presented Monday at the European Geosciences Union Congress in Vienna.

According to al-Matroushi, this year Amal will continue to sweep Deimos, but not as closely as the March 10 encounter.

In 1977, NASA’s Viking 2 came within 19 miles (30 kilometers) of Deimos. Since then, other spacecraft have imaged Deimos, but from farther away.

On July 19, 2020, the Amal rocket blasted off to Mars, just one day away from the 50th anniversary of human being on the throne first moon landing— Earth’s Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11.