IEEE Spectrum
2026-11-06 15:00 en
Last August, looking up from the edge of an ancient river delta on Mars, the Perseverance rover ’s electronic eye spied an oblong shadow crossing the distant, glowing Sun. Phobos , the Martian moon named for the Greek god of fear and panic, was transiting the solar disk. Too small to darken the pale, dust-tinged sky, but orbiting close enough to eclipse a significant fraction of the Sun, Phobos passed in less than a minute. NASA’s Perseverance rover captured Phobos passing in front of the Sun from the surface of Mars. ASU/MSSS/SSI/JPL-Caltech/NASA The tiny moon, with its murky origins, is an…