[meteorite-list] NASA Orbiter Eyes Phobos Over Mars Horizon

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:42 2004
Message-ID: <200306250019.RAA26783_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Charli Schuler (818) 393-5467
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

IMAGE ADVISORY #2003-090 June 24, 2003

NASA Orbiter Eyes Phobos Over Mars Horizon

Images from the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor
capture a faint yet distinct glimpse of the elusive Phobos, the larger
and innermost of Mars' two moons. The moon, which usually rises in the
west and moves rapidly across the sky to set in the east twice a day,
is shown setting over Mars' afternoon horizon.

The images are available on the Internet at:

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/06/23/.

Phobos is so close to the martian surface (less than 6,000 kilometers
or 3,728 miles away), it only appears above the horizon at any instant
from less than a third of the planet's surface. From the areas where
it is visible, Phobos looks only half as large as Earth's full moon.
Like our satellite, it always keeps the same side facing Mars. The
tiny moon is also one of the darkest and mostly colorless (dark grey)
objects in the solar system, so for the color image two exposures were
needed to see it next to Mars. The faint orange-red hue seen in the
wide-angle image is a combination of the light coming from Mars and
the way the camera processes the image.

The bottom picture is a high-resolution image that shows Phobos'
"trailing" hemisphere (the part facing opposite the direction of its
orbit). At a range of 9,670 kilometers (6,009 miles), this image has
a resolution of 35.9 meters (117.8 feet) per pixel. The image width
(diagonal from lower left to upper right) is just over 24 kilometers
(15 miles).

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages Mars Global
Surveyor for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C. JPL
is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver,
which developed and operates the spacecraft. Malin Space Science
Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the Mars
Orbiter Camera, and Malin Space Science Systems operates the camera
from its facilities in San Diego, Calif.

-end-
Received on Tue 24 Jun 2003 08:19:45 PM PDT