Phobos 2

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After the Viking probes, there has only been one more Mars probe that has completed its mission. The Russian probes Phobos 1 and 2 were designed to study Mars' largest moon, Phobos. This was the first time that a probe was made specifically to study the moon of another planet. Although Mission Control lost contact from Phobos 1 after accidentally sending an incorrect signal to it, Phobos 2 was almost a complete success. After being launched in May of 1988, it reached Mars on January 29, 1989.

Although Phobos 2 studied mainly Mars' moon, did discover three main important facts about Mars itself. One was that the probe discovered evidence that there are sedimentary rocks on the Martian surface. If this is true, then there must have been entire seas of liquid water on the surface at one time.

The probe also found that because of the weak magnetosphere, solar plasma could penetrate into the atmosphere. By doing this, it is estimated that the solar plasma carries away between 1 and 2 kg of the atmosphere each second. This may be one factor that caused the lack of water and a dense atmosphere in the present Mars.

The third important contribution that Phobos made was that it gave high resolution thermal maps of the surface using its Thermoscan camera.

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