See other posts from March 2010
Phobos has gravity!
Posted By Emily Lakdawalla
2010/03/09 11:43 CST
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Last week Mars Express had its closest-ever flyby of Mars' larger, inner moon Phobos. They used the close encounter for radio science, to attempt to probe the inner structure of the little potato. It'll be a few weeks at least before they have any kind of reportable results on what that data tells them, but one thing that they can already report is that they have lovely data. Here's what it looks like:

ESA / Department of Planetary Research at the University of Cologne (M. Pätzold)
Phobos' Gravity Pulling on Mars Express
I don't know enough about radio science to read much into that gray squiggles. What I can say is that ESA has really stepped up their public information game, using their blog to disseminate frequent, fascinating stories about an active science mission. Thanks, ESA operations guys!
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