It has been just over two years since the United Arab Emirates’ Mars probe, Hope (Amal), arrived on the red planet and it has now sent back some new images from there. The latest images show detailed images of Deimos, the smaller of Mars’ two moons.
The irregularly shaped Deimos is about 15x12x12 km in size and Hope has taken pictures of both its front and back sides. You can check out the images in the video below, where Deimos can also be seen with Mars in the background. When the images were taken on March 10, the distance between Hope and Deimos was 100 km when Hope was closest to the moon.
The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) says that the new images of Deimos indicate that it may have been a part of Mars, either from Mars’ larger moon Phobos or from the planet itself. The prevailing theory until now is that Deimos is an asteroid that was captured by Mars’ gravity a very long time ago. However, further observations of Deimos are needed to determine which theory is actually correct.
