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The moons of Mars are garnering increased attention, not only because they could provide a view of the solar system\u2019s past but also because they could provide invaluable staging areas for any future human settlement on Mars itself. However, missions specifically designed to visit Phobos, the bigger of the two moons, have met with varying stages of failure. So why not make an inexpensive mission to do so \u2013 one that could launch multiple copies of itself if necessary? That\u2019s the idea behind a CubeSat-based mission to Phobos, known as Perseus, which was initially described back in 2020.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Phobos is interesting for several reasons, but so far, we\u2019ve only gotten relatively grainy pictures of this small moon, whose total diameter is the size of a medium-sized city. Most of those pictures have come from Mars orbiters, such as MRO, who occasionally turn their instruments on the other bodies in the system. Several planned missions to visit directly, such as Phobos 1 and 2 and, more recently, Phobos Grunt, have failed in space, limiting our understanding of this potentially helpful moon to secondary scraps from larger missions.<\/p>\n Enter a new mission concept\u2014Perseus (which, surprisingly, appears to not be an acronym for anything) is designed as a 27U CubeSat that inherits several commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems used in other interplanetary CubeSat missions, including its own propulsion system and remote sensing kit. Depending on the funding the mission receives, it could branch into one of two different potential interaction styles with Phobos.<\/p>\n \n