The characteristic grooves that run along the surface of Phobos, one of the satellites of Mars, are an example of the massive structural failure that will cause the destruction of this moon in the future. In fact, the process of breaking up this irregular object, which is only 6,000 kilometers from the surface of the red planet, could have already begun. This is believed by, at least, a team of researchers from NASA and Arizona State University, in Tempe, who have presented the conclusions of a study on this matter during the last meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. , recently held in Maryland.
According to these scientists, the gravitational pull of Mars is not only bringing Phobos closer to the red planet at a rate of about two meters every century, but it will end up fragmenting it before 50 million years. Until now it was thought that the striations that dot this moon were due to the impact that formed the Stickney crater , 9 kilometers in diameter, a large collision that tore off a good portion of Phobos and that, according to some hypotheses, was about to destroy the satelite.
However, the new models developed by the expert in Geophysics Terry Hurford, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, one of those responsible for the trial, and his collaborators point out that they appear due to the tidal forces that Mars exerts on its satellite , and they end up deforming it.
This proposal might not hold if the interior of Phobos were as solid as previously believed, but calculations by Hurford and his colleagues suggest that it is actually nothing more than a large mass of rubble about 22 kilometers wide covered by a regolith mantle, a layer of pulverized material similar to gravel, 100 meters thick. The researchers also believe that Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, could suffer the same fate.
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
