12/01/2010 Martian Moon Phobos from Mars Express
Phobos is the larger of Mars's two moons. It is irregularly shaped, loaded with craters and resembles a potato. My theory is that a Russian astronaut from the ISS dropped his lunch during a spacewalk and it ended up orbiting Mars. It's unfortunate that the thick layer of dust covering Phobos precludes us from landing a probe on it, but if a human could ever reach Phobos, it would be a barrel of monkeys to wade through 3 feet of galactic dust on a giant potato. It took me a while to figure out why Phobos rises twice on certain parts of the planet. Near the equator, Phobos orbits so fast that it traverses the sky twice before a Martian day has elapsed. Closer to the poles, Phobos is not visible at all because it's beneath the horizon.
