Martian Moon Phobos Will Have Bits of Mars Too

Despite the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission that crashed to Earth setting off confusion, the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) is planning a second mission to Phobos,  Mars's largest moon, in 2020 with an aim to scoop samples from Phobos mixed with bits and pieces of Mars itself.

According to the new study led by geologists at the Brown University, the planned mission will collect samples from the Martian moon Phobos and determine the amount of Martian material present on the surface as well as how deep it goes.

This mission will look into whether the surface of Phobos contains tons and tons of dust, soil and rock blown off the Martian Surface. The moon has been gathering these debris for millions of years on its orbital path. Hence, the mission will be ale to collect samples of both Phobos and Mars

"The mission is scheduled to be flown early in the next decade, so the question is not academic," James Head, professor of geological sciences and an author on the study, said in a statement. "This work shows that samples from Mars can indeed be found in the soil of Phobos, and how their concentration might change with depth. That will be critical in the design of the drills other equipment."

The origin of Phobos and Deimos, the two Martian moons, are still not well understood and continue to be controversial. Hypothesis proposed earlier said the two moons were formed from rubble propelled after a comet or meteorite thrashed into the Mars. Ever since the two moons were detected, scientists have always suspected the moon Phobos to carry pieces of Martian dust and soil. And through this mission the researchers wanted to solve the mystery of how many Martian bits are present and where they can be found.

Head along with Ken Ramsley, a visiting researcher in Brown's planetary geosciences group, initiated  a model based on our Moon in order to estimate the amount of Phobo's regolith (loose rock and dust on surface) that arrives from projectiles. Later, the duo using gravitational and orbital data determined the proportion of the projectile material that arrives from Mars.

"When an impactor hits Mars, only a certain of proportion of ejecta will have enough velocity to reach the altitude of Phobos, and Phobos' orbital path intersects only a certain proportion of that," Ramsley said. "So we can crunch those numbers and find out what proportion of material on the surface of Phobos comes from Mars."

Based on their calculation, the researchers reveal that the regolith of Phobos must be made up of martian material at the rate of 250 parts per million. They believe that the distribution of the Martian material should be even at the surface especially the upper layer of the regolith. They also say that in the last 100 million years Phobos has orbited extremely close to Mars. Whereas in the distant past Phobos orbited  a little higher,  and that's why the concentration is 10-100 times more in the upper regolith.

As mentioned above, this is Roscosmos second's attempt to conduct a mission on the Red Planet's moon Phobos. The earlier 14.5 ton Phobos-Grunt crashed to Earth in a death plunge at 12.45 p.m. EST on January 15, 2012 over the Southern Pacific off the coast of Chile.

The research is published in the latest issue of Space and Planetary Science.