NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a spectacular view of one of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, passing in front of the Sun in an image from the Martian surface. However, if there were a living conscious being on the planet, it could perceive this image as the approaching end, which, as science has shown, is inevitable.
Phobos, the closest of Mars’ two moons, is getting closer and closer to the planet, and it looks like it will end in an inevitable collision. The other moon, Deimos, is constantly drifting outward until it leaves Mars’ orbit.
NASA’s page on Mars’ moon states that “Phobos approaches Mars at a speed of 1.8 meters every hundred years. If it continues at this speed, it will either hit Mars in 50 million years or break up as a ring.”
“Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed,” NASA says in its statement, and continues: “The satellite is approaching the Martian surface and is expected to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the Martian surface over the past two decades have also allowed scientists to improve their understanding of Phobos’ slow-moving death spiral.”
How is the situation for Earth and Moon?
On Earth, our Moon is moving away from us at a rate of about 3.78 centimeters per year, which means that our distant descendants will not see a total solar eclipse (unless humanity has to leave the planet or perish in the meantime). The Moon will appear too small to completely cover the Sun from our perspective.
“Over time, the total number and frequency of solar eclipses will decrease,” said Richard Vondrak, lunar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 2017. “About 600 million years from now, Earth will experience the beauty and drama of a total solar eclipse for the last time.”
Because the Sun and Moon are about 400 times farther from the Earth than the Moon and about 400 times larger in diameter, the Sun and Moon appear to be about the same size in the sky. Before the Moon shifted into its current orbit 4 million years ago, it appeared in the sky about three times as large as it is now.
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