Phobos: ISRO's MOM Captures Image Of Biggest Moon Of Mars

BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Mars Orbiter Mission has captured the image of Phobos, the closest and biggest moon of Mars. The image was captured on July 1st when the Mars Orbiter Mission was 7,200 km away from Mars and 4,200 km away from Phobos. ISRO in its latest update said that, "The image's spatial resolution is 210 m. This is a composite image generated from 6 MCC frames and the color has been corrected." According to ISRO, "The violent phase that Phobos has encountered is seen in a large section of the past collision (Stickney crater) and bouncing ejecta." In the image, one could also see the other craters (Shklovsky, Roche & Grildrig) along with the largest crater, Stickney on Phobos. ISRO took to its micro-blogging site and tweeted about the mysterious moon of Mars. Here is the tweet.

A recent image of the mysterious moon of Mars, Phobos, as captured by India's Mars Orbiter Mission

For more details visit https://t.co/oFMxLxdign@MarsOrbiter #ISRO pic.twitter.com/5IJuSDBggx

— ISRO (@isro) July 3, 2020

The Mars Orbiter Mission is also known as Mangalyaan, a space probe orbiting Mars since 24th September 2014. ISRO launched MOM on 5th November 2013 and it is India's first interplanetary mission. After Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space Agency, ISRO became the fourth space agency to reach the red planet.

The mission is a "technology demonstrator" project to develop technologies for the designing, preparation, management and execution of an interplanetary mission. It includes five scientific instruments - Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP), Mars Exospheric Neutral Composition Analyser (MENCA), Mars Colour Camera (MCC), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM) and Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS). The main aim of MOM  is to study the Martian surface and mineral composition.