Mars Orbiter Mission images Mars' moons, including the far side of Deimos | The Planetary Society
There has not been very much news out of the Mars Orbiter Mission since the Siding Spring flyby last October. Today I'm excited to show you some previously unreleased images from Mars Orbiter Mission, containing Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos, which were also taken in October. Some of these photos were included in a Lunar and Planetary Science Conference abstract (PDF),
which also mentioned that the Mars Colour Camera has returned a total of 250 images as of the time of the abstract submission. I contacted the Mars Colour Camera's head scientist, Ashutosh Arya, for permission to post the images of Mars' moons here, and he kindly shared these versions with me. According to a second abstract submitted to LPSC (PDF), the Mars Colour Camera team does eventually plan to make all images public in a format compatible with NASA's Planetary Data System, although they did not specify a schedule for the data release.
OK, to the pictures. First: Phobos, seen above and then crossing Mars' disk. We have much higher-resolution images of Phobos, of course, but it's so rare to see it in color, to see its rich dark brown against Mars' orange.
And now, here's Deimos from Mars Orbiter Mission. It's okay, I don't blame you if you're underwhelmed by these pictures; it looks like a wad of chewing gum. But stick with me and I'll explain why these pictures are significant. Arya sent me these four pictures:
Mars Orbiter Mission captured these four images of Deimos about 12 seconds apart at 13:06 UT on October 14, 2014. The images have a resolution of about 300 meters per pixel; Deimos is roughly 13 kilometers wide.
ike most solar system moons, Deimos always keeps the same hemisphere facing Mars. It's rare for spacecraft to view the hemisphere that faces away from Mars, but Mars Orbiter Mission's long, elliptical orbit permits it to do that. This image is a composite of four different exposures, stacked and enlarged 400%.
These photos don't look like much, but
they are of a face of Deimos that we almost never see: the anti-Mars side, from a perspective just a little below the equator.
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I wish ISRO releases the pics soon! they also took a lot of photos while they were orbiting earth, but released only 2 of them.