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The new images of one of the moons of Mars present a sweet surprise: it looks like candy.
The moon, Phobos, shines like a rainbow-colored jawbreaker in images taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft in infrared wavelengths (thermal vision) on April 24th.
The scientific goal of NASA is to learn which materials make up Phobos – which, in turn, could eventually reveal to researchers the origin of the moon. The infrared camera on Odyssey, called the thermal imaging system of emission (THEMIS), can detect the changes of the temperature of the surface of the moon.
Related: Moons of Mars: Amazing Photos of Phobos and Deimos
This temperature changes when Phobos revolves around Mars, which happens every 7 hours. But the temperature also varies depending on the minerals and textures on the surface of the object. Views of the full moon of THEMIS show better the composition of minerals, while half-moon views are better for examining surface textures.
"This new image is a kind of temperature, it's warmer in the middle and gradually cooling down," Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. said in a statement. "Each Phobos observation is performed at a slightly different angle or time of day, providing a new type of data."
So what is buried inside Phobos? The moon contains iron and nickel, but scientists are still trying to better understand the abundance of these metals and the minerals that surround them. This could be the key to learning from this moon history of origin.
An animation created with the help of NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft images shows three different views of Phobos. The small moon of Mars, Deimos, is also visible to the left of the central panel.
(Image: © NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / SSI)
Scientists hope to know if the moon is a wandering asteroid too close to escape the Martian gravity or if an old impactor struck Mars and threw surface materials into orbit that have united to form Phobos.
The new images can also help future scientific missions. Japan discusses a return mission of samples the two moons of the red planet that would be launched in the mid-2020s and recover material for analysis on Earth. The moon has even been suggested as a possible predecessor of a crewed mission on Mars itself. The data from THEMIS will give the undercarriages to Phobos a better idea of safe places.
"By studying the characteristics of the surface, we learn where are the most rocky places of Phobos and where the fine dust is," said Joshua Bandfield, co-researcher of THEMIS and senior researcher at the Institute of Space Science, Colorado, in the same statement. "Identifying the risks of landing and understanding the space environment could help future missions land on the surface."
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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