Eclipse of Mars' moons: Curiosity rover captures satellites crossing paths from the red planet's surface for the first time

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the larger of the two moons, Phobos, passed in front of Deimos on 1 August

Scientists created a video of the event by stitchng together 41 images taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars

First time the Martian moon eclipse has been captured from the red planet

Nasa's Curiosity rover has captured the passing of Mars' two miniature moons in a fascinating photo sequence taken from the surface of the red planet.

The eclipse of the moons - Phobos and Deimos - was captured for the first time from Mars using Curiosity's telephoto-lens camera and it is so detailed that craters are visible.



The larger moon, Phobos, passes in front of Deimos in the 30-second video comprised of 41 images taken by the robotic vehicle that were stitched together by scientists working at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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This view of the two moons of Mars comes from a set of images taken by NASA's Mars-based rover, Curiosity, as the larger moon, Phobos, passed in front of the smaller one, Deimos, from the rover's perspective, on 1 August

Curiosity recorded the spectacle on 1 August using one of the two cameras on its mast, known as Mastcam.

The video will enable scientists to learn more about the moons, including giving a more precise picture of the moons' orbits.

Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, said: 'The ultimate goal is to improve orbit knowledge enough that we can improve the measurement of the tides Phobos raises on the Martian solid surface, giving knowledge of the Martian interior.'

'We may also get data good enough to detect density variations within Phobos and to determine if Deimos' orbit is systematically changing,' he said.



The orbit of the larger moon, Phobos, is slowly getting closer to Mars, while smaller Deimos' orbit is gradually moving away from the red planet.

Phobos has a diameter of less than one per cent of the Earth's moon and it orbits much closer to Mars than our moon's distance from Earth.

The larger of Mars' moons measures just 22 kilometres in diameter but orbits just 3,700 miles from Mars' surface.



When viewed from the surface of Mars, Phobos looks about half as wide the Earth's moon appears to viewers on Earth, according to the scientists.

The larger of the two moons (pictured), Phobos, passes in front of Deimos in the 30-second video comprised of 41 images taken by the robotic vehicle that were stitched together by scientists working at Nasa's JPL. Here Phobos is seen just before the eclipse



Here, Phobos eclipses Deimos, as seen by the Curiosity rover on Mars. The smaller moon becomes visible once more in the right-hand image



The Earth's moon is vast compared to the Martian moons, with a diameter of around 2,160 miles but orbits much further away from it's planet's surface at an average of 239,000 miles.



Dr Lemmon and his colleagues said the two moons would be visible crossing paths at a time shortly after Curiosity would be awake for transmitting data to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for relay to Earth.



This made the moon observations feasible with minimal impact on the rover's energy budget.



Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life.

This illustration provides a comparison for how big the moons of Mars appear to be, as seen from the surface of Mars, in relation to how big the Earth's moon looks from the surface of Earth. Earth's moon actually has a diameter more than 100 times greater than the larger Martian moon, Phobos

The rover recently celebrated its first anniversary on Mars by using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to 'sing' Happy Birthday by vibrating at different frequencies.

Since completing its dramatic landing sequence just over a year ago, the rover has already achieved its mission aim by discovering that Mars could have supported life and is sending back information about its surroundings to inform future missions to Mars.



The mobile laboratory has provided more than 190 gigabits of data, returned more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, fired more than 75,000 laser shots to investigate the composition of targets, collected and analyzed sample material from two rocks and driven more than one mile.



Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity (a computer-generated illustration is pictured) landed on Mars in August last year for a two-year mission to determine if the planet most like Earth in the solar system has, or ever had, the an environment to sustain life

The rover has travelled almost 700 metres in the past month since leaving an area of Mars where it has been analysing rocks for around six months.



Cuiosity is now trundling along to its final destination - Mount Sharp - where it will look at the lower layers of the mountain that towers over the centre of Gale Crater by almost three and a half miles.

