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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Spirit Observes Phobos and Deimos

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When I was at DPS I looked over Mark Lemmon's shoulder as he was playing with some tremendously cool images from Spirit, images that were released last week on JPL's website (I didn't notice them there until this weekend). Because Spirit is sitting at high elevation at the top of a windy hill, the rover has a clean deck and more power now than it did when it landed (a fact that boggles the minds of all of the Mars Exploration Rover scientists). There is so much power, Mark told me, that they just can't use it all during the day. The rover's electronics box is really well insulated, which means that whenever they do any activities the box heats up. Spirit actually has to take a catnap in the afternoon because otherwise it'd get too hot from all the thinking it was doing. So they have power to spare to have fun with nighttime observations, and one of the things they have been doing is watching Phobos and Deimos pass by overhead. Here's an animation. Phobos is the brighter, faster moving one, and Deimos is the dimmer, slower moving one to the left.

Mark actually put together quite a number of these observations. These three images each represent multiple views of Phobos and Deimos over the course of 1 night each (sols 585, 590, and 594).

Finally, this pair of images shows what Spirit's Pancam can do when stretched to its fullest: it actually resolved features on the surface of Phobos, a little rock only 20 kilometers in diameter orbiting 10,000 kilometers away. The image on the left is a single frame from Spirit's Pancam, shot through a clear filter that Spirit rarely uses except in low light situations (it's the "L1" filter). At right is what they produced when they stacked many frames together, employing Laplacian sharpening to help Spirit resolve more features on Phobos. Stickney crater is the shadowed "bite" out of the top of Phobos.

For comparison, here's a view with approximately similar geometry from Mars Express. By looking back and forth between the Spirit and Mars Express views you realize that Spirit even resolved a pretty small crater that's right on the night/day terminator. Amazing.

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