Despite its status as one of the solar system's smallest moons, Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 could pick out Phobos easily against the black background of space in a series of images acquired over the course of 22 minutes on May 12, 2016.
Phobos is covering an very bad lot of ground for 22 minutes, since it clocks a full lap of Mars in just 7 hours and 39 minutes.
On August 17, 1877, astronomer Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. had discovered the Mars moon Phobos.
NASA on Thursday released the video showing Phobos in action.
Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are like the bay leaves of the solar system: They're fine I guess but what are they trying to do?
The red planet also plays host to Deimos, another small moon, as well as multiple orbiters - like NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe - that circle the world daily.
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Yes, Hubble caught Mars' tiny moon Phobos during its orbital trek around the planet. "Phobos draws nearer to Mars by about 6.5 feet every hundred years".
The Hubble observations were meant to photograph Mars, and the moon's cameo appearance was a bonus.
In 1971, NASA's Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars.
On July 20, 1976, NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down on the Martian surface. According to NASA, the moon is inching closer to the planet and will either crash right into it or be ripped up and scattered around in a ring within 30 million to 50 million years.
"The moon is marred by long, shallow grooves that are probably caused by tidal interactions with its parent planet", the United States space agency said.
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