Are we looking at a doomed "moon" of Mars? NASA scientists believe the marks seen above relate to tidal forces as Mars attempts to pull the captured asteroid down to its surface. Phobos is estimated to have another 30 to 50 million years until its destruction.
Terry Hurford of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, noted:
We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves.
I wonder how many other moons like Phobos have already fallen to the Martian surface. No comment yet from Deimos.
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltrch/University of Arizona
