Comments on: Phobos up close and very personal

By: Twodogs

Twodogs — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:42:25 +0000

I heard recently that the two moons that orbit Mars are missing and that their is an extencive dust storm on Mars that is lasting longer than usual.

By: TravisM

TravisM — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:07:49 +0000

The blog entry over at www.planetary.org/blog mentioned earlier has a map that shows just where the grooves lie (lay?)
It lines up nicely with them having been made by “running over” impact ejecta from mars impact events, not from the Stickney itself. (Bad BA… Is that a double negative?)
These grooves are entirely concentrated radially from Stickney, but on it’s west side in particular they are tangential to it. Not what you’d expect from the crater being the origin.
Furthermore, the trailing and leading hemisphere’s of the moon show exactly what you’d expect for this to be due to debri smacking into the windshield, so to speak. The leading hemisphere shows the most scattered chains, the trailing hemisphere is nearly devoid of any such chains!
Sews it up nicely, I might add.

Also, if you shoot the ceiling above the chainsaw box, you’ll get a blue health sphere and berserker pack!

And, in closing: I gotta a bad feeling about this…

By: bigjohn

bigjohn — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:23:00 +0000

Those grooves are made by 4-wheelers. Those damn things are everywhere.

By: Duane

Duane — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:11:25 +0000

I loved the description in one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s MARS books of astronauts standing on Phobos’ surface. The moon is so small that each astronaut was standing at a different angle from all the others.

Is it even possible to stand upright, let alone walk, on a “moon” like Phobos? It seems like a human, used to 1g, would kick up a tremendous amount of dust and gravel just trying to stay balanced in such a weak gravity field. Can’t wait to get there!!

By: Chip

Chip — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:13:04 +0000

I know these great images are in false color - but are they partially in false color? The reason I ask is that it looks like Phobos has acquired a coating of reddish Martian dust over many years, which may not be too far off given its low orbit.

By: AJ

AJ — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:51:26 +0000

I’m not a doubter, but I find it amusing how much this looks like a bad computer rendering.

Of course, it’s because of the simple lighting. There’s no ambient, and with no atmosphere to soften the light, the sun acts as a very sharp single light source, so shadows have very defined edges.

By: wÓÒ†

wÓÒ† — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:45:44 +0000

That’s no moon. It’s a space station.