India's Mars Orbiter Mission captures image of Mars' moon Phobos

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Friday released the picture of a mysterious moon of Mars saying that the image was captured by India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM).

Mars Colour Camera (MCC) onboard Mars Orbiter Mission took the image of Phobos, the closest and biggest moon of Mars, on July 1 when MOM was about 7200 km from Mars and at 4200 km from Phobos. Spatial resolution of the image is 210 m. The image was a composite image generated from 6 MCC frames and had been colour corrected, said Isro.

Phobos is largely believed to be made up of carbonaceous chondrites. The violent phase that Phobos has seen is visible in the large section gouged out from a past collision. Stickney, the largest crater on Phobos, along with the other craters (Shklovsky, Roche & Grildrig) were also visible in the image, said Isro.

The Rs 450 crore mission, cheaper than the Hollywood space movie Gravity, was launched with the PSLV-C25 rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on November 5, 2013. After crossing more than 66 crore kilometres in 300 days it entered into Mars orbit on September 24, 2014.