India’s March To Mars: ISRO’s Mangalyaan Now Meets Its New Neighbour, Phobos!

If you’ve been wondering what your dearest Mangalyaan is doing on the Red Planet nowadays, we’ve an update. The Indian space orbiter has now captured a moving image of Phobos, one of the two moons circling Mars. For your information, the other moon is known as Deimos.

India's much-awaited Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), which was launched on Nov 5, 2013 from Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota, had successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit on September 24, 2014.

Exploring the mode of social media, ISRO has now created a Vine to account to post a video from the orbiter. In the 3-second video, we can spot a dark dot moving over the reddish surface of Mars from west to east and that is Phobos. Later, the same video was available on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Phobos was discovered by astronomer Asaph Hall on 18 August 1877, at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington DC. This moon has a size of 27 x 22 x 18 km in diameter and orbits Mars three times a day at an unbelievable speed of just 7 hours and 39 minutes. Sometimes, it’s so close to the Red Planet’s surface that it can't even be seen.

Scientists describe Phobos as ‘the best studied natural satellite in the solar system’.

Earlier, we had mentioned that MOM has started making friends across the globe via Twitter. And now, it is trying to befriend its new neighbour, Phobos. The Mangalyaan’s journey is becoming interesting day by day.
(Image: ISRO)