Perseverance rover captures solar eclipse on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars witnessed a "googly eye" solar eclipse as the planet's moon Phobos passed in front of the Sun.

NASA has shared a new video of footage taken by Perseverance, showing the small, potato-shaped moon moving in front of the Sun's disk. Phobos appears as a dark black object against the warm light of the Sun, creating what looks like a " googly eye" (with Phobos as the pupil) in the Martian sky.

Phobos — one of Mars' two moons, along with the smaller Deimos — passed between the red planet and the sun on September 30, day 1,285 of the Perseverance mission. The rover, which was on the western wall of Mars' Jezero Crater, captured the eclipse with its powerful Mastcam-Z camera system.

This isn't the first time Perseverance has witnessed a solar eclipse from Mars. In fact, since Phobos orbits the red planet every 7.6 hours, this type of phenomenon is much more common on Mars than solar eclipses on Earth.

"Because Phobos' orbit is almost perfectly aligned with the Martian equator and relatively close to the planet's surface, transits of the moon across the sun occur on most days of the Martian year ," NASA officials said in a statement sharing new video footage of Perseverance.

At just 27km wide at its widest, Phobos is about 157 times smaller in diameter than Earth's Moon. Because of its rapid orbit, Phobos's transits of the Sun typically last only about 30 seconds. The shared video shows the eclipse in real time, as well as sped up four times.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this image of the solar eclipse on September 30. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

"At the same time Phobos appears as a large black disk moving rapidly across the Sun's surface, its shadow, or antumbra , moves across the planet's surface ," NASA announced in a press release.

In addition to Perseverance, NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers have also witnessed a Martian eclipse, in which Phobos passed in front of the Sun. By recording various eclipse events over the past 20 years, scientists have been able to learn more about the moon and how its orbit changes.

This data is particularly useful because Phobos is approaching Mars at a rate of 1.8 meters every 100 years, according to NASA. As a result, the satellite is predicted to collide with the red planet in about 50 million years.