NASA's Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars captured this astonishing video of Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars, crossing in front of the Sun on April 2. From NASA:
The images are the latest in a long history of NASA spacecraft capturing solar eclipses on Mars. Back in 2004, the twin NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity took the first time-lapse photos of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trend with videos shot by its Mastcam camera system.
But Perseverance, which landed in February 2021, has provided the most zoomed-in video of a Phobos solar eclipse yet – and at the highest-frame rate ever. That's thanks to Perseverance's next-generation Mastcam-Z camera system, a zoomable upgrade from Curiosity's Mastcam.
"I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't expect it to be this amazing," said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera[…]
Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed: The moon is getting closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the surface of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientists to refine their understanding of Phobos' slow death spiral.
