NASA ’s Perseverance Rover captured a gorgeous view of Phobos eclipsing the Sun , from the Earth’s surface of Mars . From the point of view of any Martian microbes lurking out there , the occultation may have seemed more ominous ( yeah ok , there might not be live organism up there , have alone ones sentient enough to grasp the concept of an occultation ) as the moon is destined by natural philosophy to one day slam into the cherry-red planet .
Phobos – the closest of Mars ' two moon – is set to get ever closer to the planet , before its concluding line , while Deimos will drift ever outwards until it leaves Mars ' range .
" Phobos is nearing Mars at a rate of six feet ( 1.8 meters ) every hundred twelvemonth ; at that rate , it will either break up into Mars in 50 million year or break up into a ring , " saysNASA ’s page on the Martian moon .
" scientist already eff that Phobos is doomed , " NASAsaid in a statementdiscussing the recent eclipse enamour by Perseverance . " The moon is incur closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of million of years . But occultation observation from the aerofoil of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientist to refine their intellect of Phobos ’ slow dying volute . "
Our own Moon , perhaps banal of our shenanigans , is impress aside from us at the rate of about3.78 centimetre ( 1.5 inch ) per class , meaning that in the future our distant descendent ( should they still be around ) will not see a total solar occultation . It will be too small from our perspective to cover the Sun .
" Over clip , the number and frequency of total solar eclipse will decrease , " lunar scientist at NASA ’s Goddard Space Flight Center Richard Vondraksaid in 2017 . " About 600 million years from now , Earth will live the peach and drama of a total solar eclipse for the last time . "
The fact that our Moon presently eclipses the Sun in its entirety is a felicitous accident . The Sun and the Moon look about the same size in the sky as the Sun is about 400 times further away from the Earth than the Moon , and about400 times bigger in diameter . 4 million years ago , before the Moon drifted to its current orbit , it would have appeared aboutthree times as big as it is now in the sky .
luckily , depending on your outlook , the Sun will become a Red Giant and engulf the Earth before we are by rights separated from the Moon ’s influence . We shall go down together .
An earlier version of this clause was published inApril 2022 .
