NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover recently spied a “googly eye” peering down from space from the Jezero Crater. However, the pupil that you see in this celestial gaze is actually the Martian moon Phobos, and the iris is our Sun.
It was captured by the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Sept. 30, the 1,285th Martian day of Perseverance’s mission. This celestial event occurred took place when the potato-like moon passed directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring a large part of its disc.
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Because Phobos’ orbit is almost perfectly in line with the Martian equator and relatively close to the planet’s surface, transits of the moon occur on most days of the Martian year. Due to its quick orbit (about 7.6 hours to do a full loop around Mars), a transit of Phobos usually lasts only 30 seconds or so,” said the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
