Deimos

Image from http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/

 

Deimos

Named after the Roman god of dread, Deimos is the smaller of Mars' two moons. Only 15 by 12 by 11 km in size, Deimos whirls around Mars every 30 hours.

Like Phobos, Deimos is a small "lumpy", heavily cratered object. Its craters are generally smaller than 2.5 kilometers in diameter, however, and it lacks the grooves and ridges seen on Phobos. Typically when a meteorite hits a surface, surface material is thrown up and out of the resulting crater. The material usually falls back to the surface surrounding the crater. However, these "ejecta deposits" are not seen on Deimos, perhaps because the moon's gravity is so low that the ejecta escaped to space. Material does appear to have moved down slopes, however. Deimos also has a thick regolith, perhaps as deep as 100 meters, formed as meteorites pulverized pounded the surface.

Deimos is a dark body that appears to be composed of C-type surface materials, similar to that of asteroids found in the outer asteroid belt.

Deimos data
Discovery Aug. 10, 1877, by Asaph Hall
Mean distance from center of Mars 23,460 km (14,580 miles)
Diameter 10 × 12 × 16 km (6 × 7 × 10 miles)
Mean density 2.2 g/cm 3
Escape velocity 0.0069 km/s (25 km/hr, 15 mph)
Orbital period 30.2 hours (1 day 6 hr 21 min)
Orbital eccentricity 0.0002
Orbital inclination 0.93°
Axial period synchronous
Albedo 0.07

Information from: SSE-JPL-NASA and David Darling's encyclopedia

 

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