February 17, 2025

Kristie Kim

10th Grade

John F. Kennedy High School

Can you believe a googly eye is peering down from space? As NASA’s Perseverance Rover–a rover for exploring the habitability rate of Mars–embarked on its quest to study the western boundaries of Jezero Crater, a potential host location for life on Mars, it uncovered an intriguing sight. 

Astronomer Asaph Hall named the Perseverance Rover after the Greek god of fear and panic. On September 30, 2024, while observing the sun from Mars’ sky, the Perseverance Rover’s Mastcam-Z captured a peculiar silhouette of the potato-shaped Martian moon Phobos as it passed in front of the yellow dwarf. During this partial solar eclipse, Phobos's shadow created an illusion, appearing as the pupil of an eye, with the sun contrasting as a negative space, resembling the image of an iris. 

Given that the diameter of Phobos was reported to be approximately 157 times smaller than that of Earth’s moon, NASA estimated this eclipse to have lasted around 30 seconds, hence the eye-catching appearance from Earth’s perspective. Relative to Earth, however, this event was classified to be a rapid transit on Mars, based on the Martian moon’s orbit due to its close alignment with the Martian equator. Although brief, this rare eclipse provided significant data for scientists at NASA to examine the behavior and movement of Phobos as it showed an approaching trend toward Mars. Through this anomaly, or the “googly eye,” an updated comparison to previous sightings of Phobos interrupting the rays of the Sun allowed the space team to conclude that the Martian moon would likely intersect with its parent planet within the next 50 million years.