Anything faster than a brisk walk on this martian moon could send you spinning off into space

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/anything-faster-brisk-walk-martian-moon-could-send-you-spinning-space

Source:   By Joshua Rapp Learn, Eos/AGU.

Excerpt: Walk, don’t run, on the martian moon Phobos. A new study finds that traveling faster than about 5 kilometers per hour on some regions of the Red Planet’s largest satellite could shoot you straight off into space. Phobos... is an odd duck among our solar system’s moons. It’s tiny (a fraction of a percent the size of our own moon) and is shaped like a potato; that weird shape draws gravity to different places, depending on where you are. All these features make Phobos a challenge to travel on, researchers report in Advances in Space Research. In some places, moving any faster than 5 kilometers per hour would be enough to free you from the moon’s meager gravitational pull, sending you off into space.... The fastest you could travel anywhere on Phobos would be about 36 kilometers per hour, or a little faster than a golf cart, the team finds. The findings could pose problems for planned missions to Phobos....

Popular posts from this blog

Stellar remains of famed 1987 supernova found at last

Planets around dead stars offer glimpse of the Solar System’s future—after the Sun swallows us up

JAPAN'S "SNIPER" MISSION PINPOINTS LANDING ON THE MOON