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Mars is the host of two moons, small, colorful and mysterious. Astronomers now believe that the long-standing debate about their origin has finally been settled.
The shapes and colors of the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos, as well as their marks, led astronomers to always think that the moons were in fact asteroids driven by the gravity of Mars.
The moons also seemingly resemble primitive asteroids of the outer solar system, notes a report by the American Geophysical Association because of its dark faces, but its shapes and angles do not fit this description.
Back on data dating back about 20 years, collected by the Mars Global Surveyor mission, has led astronomers to believe once again that the moons of Mars have formed after a massive impact on the planet. but two moons. This is the same way the Earth Moon would have formed.
The dataset contained several clues about the composition of the Phobos crust and appears to be more similar to the Mars surface than not.
"The fun part for me was to take a look at some of the ideas available using an old data set that was underutilized," said Tim Glotch, of Stony Brook University in New York.
Marc Fries, NASA's Johnson Space Center planetologists who did not participate in the study, explained that the question of the origins of Phobos and Deimos was a fun mystery because there are two competing hypotheses and only one can be true.
"I would not consider this a definitive solution to the mystery of the moons, but it would help advance the discussion."
The new study, says the AGU, does not really argue that Phobos is only composed of materials from Mars. However, new results show that the moon contains a piece of Martian crust. This could be the result of a mixture of Mars debris as well as remains of the massive object that has struck the Red Planet in the past.
The study was first published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.
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