dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (06/17/85)
The Soviets are planning to send a pair of spacecraft to Mars in 1988. More -- after this. June 17 A New Soviet Mission to Mars Many people have had the idea that the innermost moon of Mars -- tiny Phobos -- will someday make a good waystation for visitors to the red planet. The Soviet Union plans to visit this little moon. A new Soviet mission involves two spacecraft that'll be placed into orbits around Mars in 1988. The first craft will match orbits with Phobos -- so that the spacecraft is moving side by side with the moon -- peering down at it from a distance away of only about 50 yards. From this vantagepoint so near the inner martian moon, the Soviet spacecraft will take television images of features on the moon that are only a few inches long. Phobos itself isn't very big. It's a potato-shaped body about 20 miles long -- and about 15 miles wide. The tiny size and weak gravity of the martian moon will make it hard to accomplish the next Soviet objective for the 1988 Mars mission -- the deployment of a landing capsule to the surface of Phobos. The gravity of Phobos is so weak that it might be possible for a person standing on the moon to jump completely off it -- launching him or herself into space. So that's 1988 -- a new Soviet mission to the planet Mars -- with a possible landing on the martian moon Phobos. And by the way, we said there are two Soviet craft going to Mars. The second will be a backup for the first craft -- or it'll be used to accomplish the same goals on Deimos, the other martian moon. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin