NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured new color and 3-D imagery of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two minuscule moons.
The pictures were taken on March 23 by the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, and released on Wednesday. Phobos is expected to be the focus of an ambitious Russian-Chinese space mission scheduled for launch next year.
"Phobos is of great interest because it may be rich in water ice and carbon-rich materials," Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the HiRISE camera at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said in a NASA image advisory.
Phobos has been the subject of orbital imagery since the days of the Viking orbiters in the 1970s, and some spacecraft have taken higher-resolution pictures of the moon because they flew closer, said Nathan Bridges, a HiRISE team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter follows a track ranging from 155 to 196 miles (250 to 316 kilometers) above the Red Planet. The imagery was captured as the orbiter flew beneath the 13.5-mile-wide (22-km-wide) moon, at a distance of 3,600 to 4,200 miles (5,800 to 6,800 km). Two pictures, taken 10 minutes apart, were combined to produce a 3-D stereo view. (The 3-D effect requires the use of red-blue glasses.)
By combining information from the camera's blue-green, red and near-infrared color filters, scientists confirmed that material around the rim of Phobos' largest surface feature, Stickney Crater, appears bluer than the rest of Phobos.
"Based on analogy with material on our own moon, the bluer color could mean that the material is fresher, or hasn't been exposed to space as long as the rest of Phobos' surface has," Bridges said.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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