Phobos surface

[LKD]

In regards to Phobos, what are those lines? It looks like some sci-fi-esque practice with laser cannons to make trenches. I could imagine that an asteroid or two could glance the side and dig a mark similar to that, but for some reason, but it seems impossible that what we see could happen in nature.

Has anyone studied this, or offered hypothesis on it? Would anyone have an idea here?

Thanks,
L


http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/ima ... +Neukum%29

 

[MeteorWayne]

The images are in the MRO thread in M&L (including cropped and enlarged ones by Andrew). I may merge the two threads but am undecided which forum is the better place.

 

[3488]

Yes that's a good idea Wayne.

To help answer LKD's question, it is now thought that many of the grooves on Phobos are actually impact ejecta from Mars below. Many of the basin forming events (Hellas, Argyre, Utopia, etc) would have thrown ejecta into Near Mars Space & Phobos may have ploughed through it leaving behind the grooves.

The distribution & orientation of the grooves also support this. It was once thought that they were lines of weakness exposed when the Stickney Crater formed on Phobos, but the grooves do not converge on Stickney, rather to one side on the leading side.

Deimos being smaller & further away did not acquire similar grooves, though Deimos certainly will have Mars ejecta on the surface (the Earth does with the SNC meteorites).

Mind you more research will need to be carried out. One instance would be to catergorise the boulders on Phobos. Are some pieces of Mars blasted to Phobos or are they all indigenous to Phobos? We do not know as yet. Are the boulders in the grooves of Martian origin? Are the boulders outside of the grooves from Stickney Crater?

Questions, questions? Phobos is still quite mysterious.

Andrew Brown.

 

[LKD]

That makes a lot of sense. It resembles weathering in sedimentary earth that has eaten at some of the softer rock faster than the others.

Thank you for the answer.

 

[3488]

This is one Phobos image from the MRO HiRISE site. Unfortunately my own images have been lost, the disks I backed them up on suddenly do not work, I have literally lost hundreds of images. I will try & redo some.

I was involved with the campaign getting these observations done with MRO HiRISE, along with the more recent Deimos ones.

MRO HiRISE Phobos @ 6.8 metre resolution

MRO HiRISE Phobos @ 5.8 metre resolution

Phobos Stickney Crater HiRISE Phobos

I will be back, when I have redone some.

Andrew Brown.

 

[nimbus]

Bummer Andrew.. I lost thousands of space pics last year the same way, incl all the pics you'd posted here since uplink. It's a surprisingly bad feeling to see it all disappear like that. Hopefully you'll have reliable backups from now on.

 

[michaelmozina]

This is one Phobos image from the MRO HiRISE site. Unfortunately my own images have been lost, the disks I backed them up on suddenly do not work, I have literally lost hundreds of images. I will try & redo some.

I was involved with the campaign getting these observations done with MRO HiRISE, along with the more recent Deimos ones.

MRO HiRISE Phobos @ 6.8 metre resolution

MRO HiRISE Phobos @ 5.8 metre resolution

Phobos Stickney Crater HiRISE Phobos

I will be back, when I have redone some.

Andrew Brown.

Wow, what great images. Thanks for the links Andrew. Just eyeballing the images, it does seem like there is a correlation between the groves and the central meteorite crater on the right side, like maybe the collision process spewed streams of material out and some material fell back eventually forming some of those linear patterns.

 

[3488]

Hi everyone, finally reunited with some of my images that appeared to be lost. Links to them below.

Phobos & Deimos MRO HiRISE.

Phobos 5 KM crater with boulder 10 minutes apart. MRO HiRISE

Phobos 5 KM crater with 10 minutes apart. MRO HiRISE

Phobos another 5 KM crater 10 minutes apart. MRO HiRISE.

Phobos grooves MRO HiRISE.

Phobos grooves. Mars Express.

More Phobos grooves Mars Express

Andrew Brown.