NASA | JPL-Caltech | Purdue University | 2017 Mar 20
[img3="This image from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows one of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the other, Deimos, in 2013. New research suggests the moons consolidated long ago from dust rings around the planet and, in the distant future, may disintegrate into new rings. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M"]https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... 0x1200.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]As children, we learned about our solar system's planets by certain characteristics -- Jupiter is the largest, Saturn has rings, Mercury is closest to the sun. Mars is red, but it's possible that one of our closest neighbors also had rings at one point and may have them again someday.
That's the theory put forth by NASA-funded scientists at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, whose findings were published in the journal Nature Geoscience. David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock developed a model that suggests that debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping together to form a moon.
One theory suggests that Mars' large North Polar Basin or Borealis Basin -- which covers about 40 percent of the planet in its northern hemisphere -- was created by that impact, sending debris into space. ...
An Ongoing Satellite–Ring Cycle of Mars and the Origins of Phobos and Deimos - Andrew J. Hesselbrock, David A. Minton
- Nature Geoscience (online 20 Mar 2017) DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2916
