Mars – glorious, dusty, complex Mars – may once have been even more dazzling. New research provides even more evidence that a rubbly ring once circled the Red Planet.
Scientists have struggled for decades to explain how the two tiny moons of Mars came to be, but a new study relying on old data bolsters one of the two major hypotheses.
Like a teenage diary you can’t throw away, Mars might carry a reminder of its difficult formative years in its tiny moons. A paper published by the Royal Astronomical Society suggests the strangely small Phobos and Deimos could result from a traumatic slingshot rejection of the Red planet from the inner solar system early in its formation, stunting its own growth and removing debris to form a larger moon like our own.
While many other space missions are interested in Mars, The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to investigate Phobos and Deimos.
