Shocking Mars Discovery: Mars Destroying Own Moon 'Phobos'
A new shocking discovery about Mars was revealed by NASA recently. The Red Planet may be destroying its own moon Phobos, the space agency said.
Phobos, the bigger Mars satellite, is starting to fall apart because of the Red Planet's gravitational pull. The latest NASA report suggests that the stress of the pull may already be taking its toll on the moon, and this can be seen by the grooves on its surface, according to a Discovery News report cited by the Science Recorder.
"We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves," the Recorder quotes NASA scientist Terry Hurford's statement.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
At first, researchers thought Phobos' grooves resulted from an asteroid impact. A six-mile wide basin, called the Stickney crater, is visible on the satellite's surface. Later on, scientists discovered that the grooves are not coming from the crater itself, but from a nearby location, the report details.
The new shocking discovery about Phobos led to a theory that the grooves were created when debris from Mars crashed into the nearby moon, which is only 3,700 miles away. The latest theory about the cracks suggests that they were caused by the tidal forces between the two heavenly bodies, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
Mars and Phobos is the closest planet-moon relationship in the solar system. While the Earth's own moon, which is 238,855 miles above the planet, is moving away, Phobos is doing the opposite, the report adds.
Scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland have produced computer models showing the grooves resembling stretch marks. Every hundred years, Mars pulls Phobos 6.6 feet closer to itself. If this rate continues, Phobos would crash into the Red Planet within the next 30 to 50 million years.
However, NASA scientists think Phobos would not reach that time because it is already starting to break down. Phobos was once thought as a solid body, but now researchers agree that the Red Planet's closest moon is just a loose pile of rubble and powder. This structure can easily be broken down by tidal forces between Mars and its moon.
