Last week, we brought you news of Phobos’ near certain demise. Now a new study suggests just what the ultimate fate of Mars’ closest moon may be: a Saturn-like ring around The Red Planet that may last for millions of years.
A new study posted Monday in the scientific journal Nature Geosciences predicts that within 20 to 40 million years, Phobos will break apart and start to form a ring with equal density to that of Saturn. The new ring system would last anywhere from a million to 100 million years afterwards before dissipating, they say.
Scientists believe that larger chunks of Phobos will break off as the moon disintegrates and falls to the Martian surface. Mars could be in for an extended period of heavy bombardment as the moon breaks apart as a result, something it and the rest of the solar system has not seen for at least a billion years, if not longer.
While this new paper accelerates the breakup by about 10 million years, it does agree with the previous study’s premise that Phobos is not completely solid. Researchers say analysis of the moon’s composition “suggests that much of Phobos is composed of weak, heavily damaged materials,” accelerating the process.
The continued focus on Phobos and its terminal dance with its host planet may lead to increased pressure to investigate the moon closer. NASA already has a proposed mission in the planning stages that would take a probe to Phobos and Deimos to launch sometime in 2020.
Called PADME (Phobos And Deimos & Mars Environment), one of its stated goals was to determine the origin and composition of both moons. With new questions surrounding Phobos’ eventual fate, researchers might just get the impetus they need to get the go ahead to make the mission a reality.
Scientists in this study already argue that their analysis “underscores the potential orbital and topographic consequences of the growth and self-destruction of other inwardly migrating moons,” and research could lead to a better understand of the life and death sequences of other planetary bodies.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.