Moons of Mars Moons of Mars The two moons of Mars are Phobos and Deimos. Both were discovered by Asaph Hall in August 1877 and are named after the Greek mythological twin characters Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos (terror/dread) who accompanied their father Ares, god of war, into battle. Ares was known as Mars to the Romans. Phobos orbits closer to Mars, with a semi-major axis of to Deimos' . The existence of the moons of Mars had been speculated about since the moons of Jupiter were discovered. It is known that when Galileo, as a hidden report about him having observed two bumps
Double planet that this definition of double planet depends on the pair's distance from the Sun. If the Earth–Moon system happened to orbit farther away from the Sun than it does now, then Earth would win the tug of war. For example, at the orbit of Mars, the Moon's tug-of-war value would be 1.05. Also, several tiny moons discovered since Asimov's proposal would qualify as double planets by this argument. Neptune's small outer moons Neso and Psamathe, for example, have tug-of-war values of 0.42 and 0.44, less than that of Earth's Moon. Yet their masses are tiny compared to Neptune's, with an