[meteorite-list] NASA Rover Gets Movie as a Mars Moon Passes Another

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:59:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201308152259.r7FMxb7W004811_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-253

NASA Rover Gets Movie as a Mars Moon Passes Another
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 15, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- The larger of the two moons of Mars, Phobos, passes
directly in front of the other, Deimos, in a new series of sky-watching
images from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

A video clip assembled from the images is at http://youtu.be/DaVSCmuOJwI .

Large craters on Phobos are clearly visible in these images from the
surface of Mars. No previous images from missions on the surface caught
one moon eclipsing the other.

The telephoto-lens camera of Curiosity's two-camera Mast Camera
(Mastcam) instrument recorded the images on Aug. 1. Some of the
full-resolution frames were not downlinked until more than a week later,
in the data-transmission queue behind higher-priority images being used
for planning the rover's drives.

These observations of Phobos and Deimos help researchers make knowledge
of the moons' orbits even more precise.

"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," said Mark Lemmon of
Texas A&M University, College Station. He is a co-investigator for use
of Curiosity's Mastcam. "We may also get data good enough to detect
density variations within Phobos and to determine if Deimos' orbit is
systematically changing."

The orbit of Phobos is very slowly getting closer to Mars. The orbit of
Deimos may be slowly getting farther from the planet.

Lemmon and colleagues determined that 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. That made the moon observations feasible with minimal impact on
the rover's energy budget.

Although Phobos has a diameter less than one percent the diameter of
Earth's moon, Phobos also orbits much closer to Mars than our moon's
distance from Earth. As seen from the surface of Mars, Phobos looks
about half as wide as what Earth's moon looks like to viewers on Earth.

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.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates Curiosity's
Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington and built the Navigation Camera and the rover.

More information about the mission is online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

For more information about the Multi-Mission Image Processing
Laboratory, see: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/mipex.html .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-253
Received on Thu 15 Aug 2013 06:59:37 PM PDT


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