Emirates Mars Orbiter Takes Epic Photos of Mars’ Moon

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

Recently, a spacecraft called Hope from the United Arab Emirates captured new high-resolution images of the tiny satellite. As part of the Emirates Mission to Mars (EMM), Hope used its onboard instruments to capture a never-before-seen view of space rocks.

Mars has two oddly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are only 17 and 9 miles across, respectively. Their odd size, compact size and proximity to the asteroid belt lead scientists to believe that both rocky bodies are likely captured asteroids. But thanks to new images beamed back by the Nozomi orbiter, a new theory is emerging.

“We’re getting the highest resolution [images] forever,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, the mission’s science lead.

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

Following its launch in 2020, the Mars Orbiter is hoped to arrive at the Red Planet in 2021 and has been studying the Martian atmosphere. Now that its primary science mission is complete, the spacecraft has enough fuel reserves to launch a secondary mission: observing Deimos in detail.

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

During the initial flyby, Hope pointed all three instruments at Deimos to study the moon at different wavelengths in an attempt to determine its composition. Preliminary analysis suggests that Deimos is more similar to Mars than to carbon-rich asteroids.

“It looks more like Mars than an asteroid,” said Al Matroushi of how ecstatic she and her team were when they first saw the image. “With Mars in the background, it’s really exciting,” she said.

Scientists aren’t quite sure how Deimos formed, but they’re sure it’s more like Mars than an asteroid, and it’s distinct from Phobos, Mars’ other moon. Al Matroushi said that if Deimos originated from an asteroid, the team did not find a lot of carbon and organic matter. “If carbon or organics are present, we see a spike in wavelength,” she said. “But the data is very flat.”

Like our Moon, Deimos is tidally locked to Mars, meaning that observations of the Moon from the planet’s surface or from any spacecraft in low Martian orbit will always see the same side of Deimos. Fortunately for science, Kiwi has a very slender orbit, extending 40,000 kilometers above Earth, which allows the Kishi spacecraft to observe and image 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 our understanding of the Moon and Mars.

Al Matroushi said Hope’s observations of Deimos will continue until 2024, along with more observations of Mars. “We don’t want to do just one-off observations of Deimos,” she said. “We knew we wanted more.”