Extreme Close-Up of Mars's Moon Phobos

coondoggie writes "The European Space Agency's Mars exploring satellite will make a number of close-up passes of the Martian moon Phobos. The Mars Express, which the agency launched in 2003, has begun a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars, that will ultimately set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos — skimming the surface at 50 km, or about 31 miles. This is only about 5 times the irregular moon's average radius. The data collected by the satellite could help solve some of the mysteries about the moon, beginning with that of its origin."

Comments

Not what I asked for.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted an extreme close-up of Phoebe Cates, dammit.

Re:Not what I asked for.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Here you go!

A little plain

[T Murphy]

It looks rather plain- for some reason I thought it would look a little scary or something. Not sure why.

Re:A little plain

[CorporateSuit]

Because we haven't built our base there yet.

Re:A little plain

[__aaclcg7560]

I think the leather goddesses are camera shy.

Picture caption

[jms]

For sale: One Death Star. Full size. Somewhat lumpy. Amateur construction. Needs work.

Re:Picture caption

[RobertB-DC]

For sale: One Death Star. Full size. Somewhat lumpy. Amateur construction. Needs work.

That's just an early engineering prototype. The production model came out looking much better.

"Hollow"?

[John Hasler]

> When calculating the density, this gives a surprising figure because it
> seems that parts of Phobos may be hollow...

That is interesting, to say the least.

Re:"Hollow"?

[khallow]

Hot priestess with computer? Plz send picture of computer.

Re:"Hollow"?

[mbone]

When calculating the density, this gives a surprising figure because it
  seems that parts of Phobos may be hollow...

There was a 50 year old hypothesis that Phobos was hollow, with a very low density, in order to explain the anomalous drag on the satellite, which has now been shown to be due to the tidal bulge raised on Mars by Phobos. The measured density is about 1.9 gm/cm^3, which is a little low, but not unusual compared to the asteroids, especially small asteroids.

These are probably just all rock piles, repeatedly fractured by collisions and without enough self-gravity to smush things back together, so some internal voids would not be surprising.

Oblig.

[Freaky Spook]

IT's A TRAP!!!!!!

no no, wait, I got this..

That's no moon!!!

Re:Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ignorant. Many of the technologies that we have now owe their existence to space technology. We know more than ever about our own planet's environment, its ecosystem, weather and lifeforms thanks to the exploration of other planets. It is likely that you would not even have a computer, nor access to a global network to post your message on if not for technology developed for space exploration. There is also the simple drive for knowledge, but obviously knowing things isn't your modus operandi.

What REALLY needs to be cut is military and weapons funding. The invasion of Iraq alone costs around ten billion tax dollars per year for a pointless and unscrupulous occupation.

Where's the fucking hi-res pictures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to be blunt, but I don't visit Slashdot to get redirected to some shitty ad-plastered website with half-assed copy/pasted information.

Was it really so hard for the submitter to give this a proper non-misleading title, and a link to the actual ESA press release?

Is there a way to get kdawson fired? He seems to pull this shit a lot.

Pictures from 200 km

[mbone]

The Soviet Phobos-2 mission returned some cool pictures before its computer failed. I especially like the ones with Mars in the background.