Phobos Essay

The article I had chosen came from the magazine Astronomy and it titled “How moon dust will put a ring around Mars.” Phobos, one of the larger martian moons is making its way towards Mars and will eventually hit the gravitational line of Mars. The force will break apart this moon and in result, Phobos will turn into boulders, rocks ,and dust orbiting Mars. Pieces of the moon that do not fall into the orbit will end up crashing into the surface of Mars, causing more craters. This is predicted to happen twenty five to seventy five million years from now, but Mars will end up having its own ring system like the gas giants. Phobos is only 13.8 miles in diameter and it 5,827 miles away from Mars. As Phobos orbits Mars, a tidal bulge is created and moves along the surface of Mars as the moon rotates around the planet. Phobos only takes seven hours and thirty-nine minutes to rotate around Mars, and is one of the 18 moons in the solar system that has an orbit time faster than its planet. Since its orbital …show more content…
In the article a picture was shown of Phobos and in the photograph you can see the lines that have been cut across the surface from the gravity of Mars. Phobos is being torn apart year by year and there is nothing that can stop it. It just shows how powerful the gravitational pull is of these planets. It’s interesting that in millions of years the debris of Phobos will be orbiting around Mars for a short period of time and the rest will form craters on the surface. Other interesting information that I learned was that Earth once had a ring when the moon was forming billions of years ago and may be the only terrestrial planet that has ever had a ring. The information given about Mars in the article was interesting and I wonder how many other discoveries scientists will make about our solar system in the