Moons of Mars its 30-hour orbit, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars. Both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face towards Mars. Since Phobos orbits Mars faster than the planet itself rotates, tidal forces are slowly but steadily decreasing its orbital radius. At some point in the future, when it approaches Mars closely enough (see Roche limit), Phobos will be broken up by these tidal forces. Several strings of craters on the Martian surface, inclined further from the equator the older they are, suggest that there may have been
Martian Moons Exploration Phobos, and land once or twice and gather sand-like regolith particles using a simple pneumatic system. The lander mission aims to retrieve a minimum of samples. The spacecraft will then take off from Phobos and make several flybys of the smaller moon Deimos before sending the Sample Return Capsule back to Earth, arriving in July 2029. The mission architecture uses three modules: propulsion module (1,800 kg), exploration module (150 kg) and the return module (1,050 kg). With the mass of Deimos and Phobos being too small to capture a satellite, it is not possible to orbit the Martian moons in