This view, at many times the true speed, stays with Phobos, on the sunlit side as it orbits, with Mars sweeping around behind. Produced with the Celestia Open Universe program, which is freeware.Russia is planning, with the assistance of China, an unmanned mission to Phobos beginning in 2009, to bring back soil. In Russian, the meaning of the name of the mission is Mars Ground, or Mars Soil. Where on Phobos would they most like to bring soil back from? The large crater with a smaller crater inside it, called Stickney, might give the best evidence of the interior of Phobos or they may be planning to bring back several samples, from different places. The gravity is so low on Phobos that it would be possible for a person to jump great distances. Would it be too expensive to send a small humanoid robot on a mission like this, perhaps to help with collecting samples or some other useful work?There was discussion of the geology of Stickney in a paper by T. V.Shingareva and R. O. Kuzmin-Vernadsky Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Kosygin St.,19, Moscow 117975,GSP-1, Russia (rok@geokhi.ru).Nuclear electric-power units are shown on the animation of the Cassini spacecraft, which is also among my videos here at YouTube. They are at the back, with cooling vanes on them. I envisage a humanoid robot on Phobos being nuclear powered; please see the comments to this video.Deimos, the other moon of Mars, is the subject of another of my animations here at YouTube.

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