North Polar Basin (Mars) suggest that a body approximately 0.02 Mars masses in size is capable of producing a sizable debris disk in Martian orbit, on the order of 5x10 kg, with a significant fraction of the material remaining close to Mars. This figure lies within the estimated mass range necessary to form the two moons, as other data suggests that only 1% of the mass of an accretion disk successfully forms moons. There are several other large impact basins on Mars that could have ejected enough debris to form the moons. Analysis of Mars Global Surveyor data found mineral deposits similar to terminal
Moons of Haumea pure crystalline water ice covering much of its surface. The unusual spectrum, and its similarity to absorption lines in the spectrum of Haumea, led Brown and colleagues to conclude that it was unlikely that the system of moons was formed by the gravitational capture of passing Kuiper belt objects into orbit around the dwarf planet: instead, the Haumean moons must be fragments of Haumea itself. The sizes of both moons are calculated with the assumption that they have the same infrared albedo as Haumea, which is reasonable as their spectra show them to have the same surface composition. Haumea's albedo