Does mars have a moon?

Question

And if not-where will we go after we land on mars?

Answer 1

Mars has 2 moons deimos and phobos

Answer 2

Yes, Mars has (at least) two moons - Phobos and Deimos. They're pretty puny little things, so there's not much reason for us to go there - apart from anything else, they don't have much gravity so it would be very difficult to land on them, nevermind walk around.

The moons of the outer planets look far more interesting to go to after Mars as they're pretty big and seem to have some interesting chemistry - atmospheres, possibly some water ice, maybe even liquid water under the surface. However, they'd take a long time to get to - many years - and we don't have the technology, or the knowledge about the human body, to design a mission for that sort of trip yet.

Answer 3

Mars has two tiny asteroidal moons called Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Pain). They're irregularly shaped, much much smaller than our own moon (a few tens of kilometres across) and orbit in much lower orbits. If you were on the surface of mars, you would be able to see them moving.

One of them, I'm not sure which, is orbiting retrograde fashion, ie in the opposite direction to the way Mars is spinning and as such, is getting lower all the time and will eventually crash into the surface. So if you guys are going to land on it, better get there some time in the next few million years.

Answer 4

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. They are both believed to be captured asteroids, due to their irregular shape and small size (Phobos having a 22.2km wide diameter, while Deimos is just 12.6km wide!). Both moons are heavily cratered and are made up of rock and ice. Like our moon they have a coating of dust on their surfaces.
Actually landing on these oversized rocks would be much easier than going down to the Martian surface. The gravity on each of the moons is so weak you could launch a golf ball (permanently) off the surface with a weak swing!

Here's some pics of each of them:
http://planetary.org/image/phobos_mex_orbit756_bw_1115x944.jpg
http://planetary.org/image/vo_deimos2.gif

Answer 5

Yes. Mars has 2.
The link below has a animation of the moons in the sky from the Mars rover spirit perspective.

Answer 6

One of the answerers noted that one of the moons of Mars orbits retrograde. This is not correct. However, one of the moons does orbit in nearly a "mars-o-synchronous"=orbit--it takes 30.5 hours only to orbit the planet, so is in the sky for quite some time, going through it's phases several times in the process. The other moon orbits much closer and more quickly than the 30.5 hour one, and is so close to Mars it can only be seen by martians (if there were any) near the equator (it is hidden elsewhere by the curvature of mars itself and is always below the horizon). Interestingly, Jonathon Swift predicted the existence of two small moons of Mars in one of his novels years before they were discovered (in 1877 by Asaph Hall), and placed them very close to the planet and said they were very small.

Answer 7

Mars has two little moons. They're pretty cool. After we land on Mars, I hope technology increases so humans can go further into space. Hopefully there would be more space stations too.

Answer 8

Mars does have moons. It has 2 moons, named as Phobos & Diemos

Answer 9

Yes, Mars has two small moons named Phobos and Deimos. Their names mean fear and panic in Latin. Phobos and Deimos are not round like our moon. They are much smaller and have irregular shapes. Phobos is 13.8 miles (22.2 km) across and Deimos is only 7.8 miles (12.6 km) across. Both moons are covered with craters and are made of rock and iron. It is possible that Phobos and Deimos were two asteroids which were captured by the gravity of Mars.

Answer 10

Yes, Mars has 2 moons as everyone else has indicated. :-D