Engineering · 2026-11-06

How Do You Land on a Moon With Almost No Gravity?

Last August, looking up from the edge of an ancient river delta on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s electronic eye spied an oblong shadow crossing the distant, glowing Sun. Phobos, the Martian moon named for the Greek god of fear and panic, was transiting the solar disk.

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Last August, looking up from the edge of an ancient river delta on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s electronic eye spied an oblong shadow crossing the distant, glowing Sun. Phobos, the Martian moon named for the Greek god of fear and panic, was transiting the solar disk. Too small to darken the pale, dust-tinged sky, but orbiting close enough to eclipse a significant fraction of the Sun, Phobos passed in less than a minute. NASA’s Perseverance rover captured Phobos passing in front of the Sun from the surface of Mars.ASU/MSSS/SSI/JPL-Caltech/NASA The tiny moon, with its murky origins, is an enigma, and one whose makeup and history could tell us much about Mars and the wider solar system.

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Original source: IEEE Spectrum ↗

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