Perseverance captures a rare sight from the surface of the Red Planet.
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Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA’s moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she’s covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association’s top honor,
, and
for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won
, including first place for her Sex in Space series. Send space tips and story ideas to
or text 443-684-2489. Follow her on X at
.
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NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a photo of the sky in the hours just before dawn on March 1, 2025.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
In the hours just before dawn, NASA‘s Perseverance rover adjusted its gaze toward the heavens and saw a brilliant point of light.
That bright sparkle wasn’t a morning star beaming from distant space, but something more mysterious — Mars‘ shiest moon, Deimos. The rover used one of its navigation cameras at a long-exposure setting to capture the new image.
“It’s definitely a mood,” NASA said of the rare photo in a post on X.
Because the rover took the image in the dark with an almost one-minute exposure time, the scene appears hazy.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, but scientists know relatively little about them — especially Deimos, the smallest of the two. Both moons are “blacker than coal and look like battered potatoes,” according to the European Space Agency, which has studied the pair with its Mars Express spacecraft.
Right now researchers aren’t sure where the moons came from, and it remains a source of scientific debate. Some believe they could have been asteroids captured in orbit around the Red Planet. Others think they could be chunks of Mars itself, blown out by a giant collision billions of years ago.
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Nearly all of the images of Deimos, a city-sized moon at roughly 7.5 miles wide, have been taken just like this new one, from the Martian surface by rovers. Because the moon is tidally locked — meaning one full spin matches the amount of time it takes to complete its orbit of Mars — only one of its sides has been seen on the Red Planet.
NASA’s Perseverance rover was on its way to a new exploration site on the rim of Jezero crater, dubbed Witch Hazel Hill, when it conducted the Deimos photoshoot. Though Perseverance took the image on March 1, NASA just released it to the public.
Because the rover took the image in the dark with an almost one-minute exposure time, the scene appears hazy. Many of the white dots in the sky likely aren’t distant stars but digital noise. Some others could be cosmic rays, space particles traveling close to the speed of light, according to NASA. Two of the brighter specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars about 78 and 130 light-years away from the solar system respectively, in the constellation Leo.
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Though little is known about Deimos, another European spacecraft recently captured unprecedented views of the moon’s far side. The Hera mission, which will study the asteroid NASA intentionally crashed into three years ago, flew by the Red Planet on March 12, just 11 days after the rover looked up.
Hera’s flyby wasn’t a detour but a necessary maneuver to put the spacecraft on the right trajectory toward its ultimate asteroid destination. Swinging within 625 miles of Deimos, Hera used Martian gravity to adjust its course.
Queen cofounder Brian May, who is an astrophysicist when he isn’t playing guitar, is among the team that processed the Deimos images.
“You feel like you’re there, and you see the whole scene in front of you,” he said during a news conference in March. “The science that we get from this is colossal, and I think we’re all like children.”
Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA’s moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds. Through 17 years of reporting, she’s covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association’s top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series. Send space tips and story ideas to [email protected] or text 443-684-2489. Follow her on X at @elishasauers.
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