Icarus may have flown too close to the sun, but NASA’s rover had no fear when it recorded the aptly name Martian moon “Phobos” passing in front of the sun.
Images of the partial eclipse of the Mars moon (named after the ancient Greek word for fear), were captured on February 8, Knewz.com has learned.
NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is nicknamed "Percy," took a series of stunning images from Mars’ Jezero Crater as the Red Planet’s potato-shaped moon briefly eclipsed the sun. Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uploaded 68 images of the solar eclipse to their Perseverance raw images site.
The extraordinary event comes exactly two months before North Americans will be able to witness a solar eclipse on this planet.
The rover, which first landed on Mars in February 2021, captured the images of the asteroid-sized moon with its left Mastcam-Z cameras, perched high above its mast. The Mastcam-Z is a pair of scouting cameras that takes color images and video, three-dimensional stereo images, and has a powerful zoom lens. They’re usually used to take panoramic landscape views of the planet.
To capture the eclipse, the Mastcam-Z was pointed upwards, allowing it to take images of Phobos passing overhead. The Phobos moon is relatively small, however - 17 miles long on its longest side – which is why it could only manage a partial eclipse of the sun.
Perseverance is not the first Mars rover to witness Phobos crossing the sun. Spirit and Opportunity managed to do that in 2004. However, it was only in 2019 that Curiosity recorded the first video of the eclipse.
Phobos was discovered several thousand miles above Mars’ surface in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall. The moon is expected to collide with Mars in about 50 million years or break up into a ring, according to NASA. It’s one of two Martian moons – the other being Deimos, which is smaller than Phobos at approximately nine miles at its longest.
To date, no spacecraft has been able to visit Phobos. However, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), plans to send a Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission to Phobos in 2026.
Meanwhile, here on Earth, Americans from Texas to Maine will be able to witness a total solar eclipse on April 8. It will also be visible from Mexico and Canada.
