Phobos

Phobos — moon orbiting Mars, shown live in Cosmoscope, a real-time 3D map of the universe.

A captured lump of rubble racing around Mars three times a day, so low that Mars’s tides are slowly reeling it in.

Radius
11.27 km
Orbit
9k km from Mars
Period
0.32 days
Doomed
Spiraling inward — breaks up in ~50 Myr

Seeing Phobos in real time

Cosmoscope puts Phobos at its true position in the solar system, computed from JPL-derived ephemeris and updated continuously. Open the live 3D view to see, in real time, how far Phobos is from the Sun and from Earth right now, how many minutes or hours light takes to cross that gap, and how fast it is moving along its orbit. Scrub the timeline to place Phobos where it was on any past date, or where it will be years from now.

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