Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

Since Phobos and Deimos have been in the news of late...

...I wonder if JPL took advantage of the partial solar-eclipses generated
by those martian moons to do a spectral analysis of the possible clouds of very-fine dust that
may hover around those low-gravity bodies?

It's been known by astrophysicists for decades that low-drifting clouds of very fine lunar-dust [each particle a few microns in diameter] when ionized by UV radiation tend to electrostatically levitate and hover upto a meter or two above the lunar surface.
The ionized lunar dust-cloud is of course very tenous; but the Surveyor-6/7 spacecraft
did manage to image the faint glow caused by sunlighjt scattered off that levitated dust just after lunar sunset.

The same should hold true for very fine dust on the martian moons. And because the martian moons have a much weaker gravity than our Luna, the ionized, drifting clouds of microscopic dust particles should drift hundreds of meters from the surface of the martian moons.

Jacob

"This planet has a 100 percent mortality rate."

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