Odyssey’s Three Views of Phobos in Visible Light

This movie shows three views of the Martian moon Phobos as viewed in visible light by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. The apparent motion is due to movement by Odyssey's infrared camera, Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), rather than movement by the moon.

Each of the three panels is a series of images taken on different dates (from top to bottom): Sept. 29, 2017; Feb. 15, 2018; and April 24, 2019. Deimos, Mars' other moon, can also be seen in the second panel. While displayed here in visible-wavelength light, THEMIS also recorded thermal-infrared imagery in the same scan.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University in Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing.

The THEMIS investigation is led by Philip Christensen at ASU. The prime contractor for the Odyssey project, Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena.