Hesselbrock and Minton's model suggests that as the ring formed, and the debris slowly moved away from the Red Planet and spread out, it began to clump and eventually formed a moon. By passing through its resonance, Phobos would have altered Deimos’ orbit. Resonance occurs when two moons exert gravitational influence on each other in a repeated periodic basis, as major moons of Jupiter do. "You could have had kilometer-thick piles of moon sediment raining down on Mars in the early parts of the planet's history, and there are enigmatic sedimentary deposits on Mars with no explanation as to how they got there," Minton said. "Not much has happened to Deimos' orbit since it formed," Minton said. Minton and Hesselbrock will now focus their work on either the dynamics of the first set of rings that formed or the materials that have rained down on Mars from disintegration of moons. Does Mars have rings? Sensors on NASA's Perseverance will help prepare for future human exploration by taking weather measurements and studying dust particles. "And now it's possible to study that material.". A planet can have two types of rings, ice, and dust. For more information about NASA missions investigating Mars, visit: Origami-inspired Robot Can Hitch a Ride with a Rover, Mars Volcano, Earth's Dinosaurs Went Extinct About the Same Time. Hesselbrock and Minton’s model suggests that as the ring formed, and the debris slowly moved away from the Red Planet and spread out, it began to clump and eventually formed a moon. That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Phobos, Mar's larger and inner moon, is doomed in that its orbit is below synchronous altitude (less than 6000 km above Mars) and is losing altitude by a bit less than 2 meters per century. He is the project scientist for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, whose gravity mapping provided support for the hypothesis that the northern lowlands were formed by a massive impact. Each time a moon broke apart and reformed from the resulting ring, its successor moon would be five times smaller than the last, according to the model, and debris would have rained down on the planet, possibly explaining enigmatic sedimentary deposits found near Mars' equator. Mars is red, but it's possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday. Mars is red, but it’s possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday. No, the planet Mars does not have any visible rings. This sequence of images from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows one of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the other, Deimos, in 2013. Also, Phobos would have had to form far from Mars and would have had to cross through the resonance of Deimos, the outer of Mars’ two moons. Over time, Mars’ gravitational pull would have pulled that moon toward the planet until it reached the Roche limit, the distance within which a planet’s tidal forces will break apart a celestial body that is held together only by gravity. That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Share. “You could have had kilometer-thick piles of moon sediment raining down on Mars in the early parts of the planet’s history, and there are enigmatic sedimentary deposits on Mars with no explanation as to how they got there,” Minton said. That’s the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. 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