A satellite orbiting Mars captured a stunning view of our solar system.
The European Space Agency recently released footage filmed this year by its Mars Express satellite, which has been snapping detailed views of the Red Planet for nearly two decades.
Peering into space beyond Mars, we can see the desert world’s small, lumpy moon Deimos traveling through the foreground of the shot. Beyond, some 466 million miles away, is bright Jupiter and its four large moons: the fascinating Europa, which likely contains an ocean; the lava-blanketed Io, which is the most volcanically active world in our solar system; Ganymede, the biggest moon in our solar system; and Callisto, a moon covered in craters. In the footage below, these four Galilean satellites — named so for the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who discovered them with a telescope centuries ago — appear as white dots.
The space agency describes the scene, which is composed of 80 images: “First, Deimos passes in front of Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede (left), followed by Jupiter (large white circle), and Io and Callisto (right). The slight movement of Deimos in the sequence of images is caused by the small vibrations after the spacecraft manoeuvres into position.”
Two views of Mars’ moon Deimos.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
Like many moons, Deimos is covered in craters. But Deimos is quite small, some seven miles across (Earth’s moon is well over 2,000 miles across), so when objects smash into the tiny satellite, the blasted rocks and dust (“ejecta”) likely escape into space as opposed to falling back to the surface, NASA explains.
Meanwhile, down on the surface of Mars, scientists are closely scrutinizing the Martian desert for any hints that primitive, microbial life may have ever once dwelled on the planet. There’s still zero evidence of life anywhere beyond Earth. But NASA‘s car-sized Perseverance rover is currently exploring the dried-up river delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater, a place planetary scientists believe once hosted a lake.
“This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life,” NASA said.
