It is a bird! It is a plane! No, it is Phobos, Mars, and the potato-shaped moon crossing the face of the Sun!
The Perseverance Mars rover shared a video of the solar eclipse on its account. You can see something pass over the Sun through the Mast cam-Z camera on Mars.
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This detailed video can help scientists on my team better understand the Martian moon and how its gravity affects the interior of Mars. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is giving us another reason to watch WALL-E and cry.
The video was taken on April 2, 400 days into the mission. The solar eclipse that we see here on Earth lasts about seven and a half minutes, but it lasted less than 40 seconds. It is different from a solar eclipse in that Phobos does not completely cover up the Sun; instead, it just passes through. According to NASA, Phobos is 157 times smaller than the Moon. Mars is smaller than the other moon.
Rachel Hows, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera, said in a press release that she didn't expect it to be this amazing. You know what's coming, but there's still an element of surprise when you see the final product.
We have seen Phobos cross over the sun before. The first photos of a Phobos solar eclipse were taken by NASA rovers in 2004. The best quality video of the solar eclipse was captured by Perseverance. Unlike past captures of the eclipse, which show sunspots and ridges and bumps on the moon, this video shows color.
It is a beautiful place, but Phobos is here for a while. The moon is doomed to crash into the planet in a few million years. I am sad.
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