What's a mystery Martian moon made of? This scientist will find out - The Times
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Phobos has been called hollow or an alien craft — now a Natural History Museum scientist is joining a mission to finally dig in and find out.
Planetary Formation TheoryFermi ParadoxOccam's RazorScientific Falsificationism
Theory Briefing
- Sara Russell of the Natural History Museum is part of a mission to physically sample Phobos, Mars's mysterious inner moon.
- Wild theories about Phobos range from it being hollow to an artificial alien structure — claims the mission aims to test against real material.
- Phobos's origin is genuinely disputed: it could be a captured asteroid, a chunk of Mars blasted into orbit, or something stranger.
- Digging into the moon's composition could settle decades of competing theories about how the Martian system formed.