Solar eclipse on Mars: Watch this video captured by NASA's Perseverance rover
1 min read 23 Apr 2022, 09:49 AM ISTPhobos is moving very slowly towards Mars, and millions of years from now, they will collide, according to a statement by NASA
PremiumNASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this sped-up video of an eclipse featuring Phobos, one of Mars' two moons. The video taken by Perseverance rover is the most zoomed-in, highest-frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface.
"Using our rovers to observe Martian eclipses gives scientists new perspectives on the subtle shifts in the moons' orbits. Intense tidal forces created by its proximity to the Red Planet, Phobos is moving very slowly towards Mars, and millions of years from now, they will collide," according to a statement by NASA.
Despite having its eyes in the sky, one of Perseverance’s primary objectives is looking for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is studying and analyzing the Red Planet's regolith, rock and dust, and is the first rover to collect and cache samples.
Meanwhile, the first audio recordings on Mars reveal a quiet planet with occasional gusts of wind where two different speeds of sound would have a strange delayed effect on hearing, scientists said earlier this month
After NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February last year, its two microphones started recording, allowing scientists to hear what it is like on the Red Planet for the first time.
In a study published in the Nature journal on Friday, the scientists gave their first analysis of the five hours of sound picked up by Perseverance's microphones.
The audio revealed previously unknown turbulence on Mars, said Sylvestre Maurice, the study's main author and scientific co-director of the shoebox-sized SuperCam mounted on the rover's mast which has the main microphone.
