- My astronomy blog

Make a paper 3D model of the Martian Moon Phobos

While wandering around the Internet, I stumbled across instructions on how to make a paper 3D model of the Martian moon Phobos. Instructions and the map can be found on The Planetary Society’s blog here. From what I can tell, the map isn’t available in pdf format. You will need to copy and paste the high resolution version into a program such as Open Office or MS Office before you can print it out to make it.

As an aside, this would be a great way of familiarising yourself with Phobos before the Russians and Chinese arrive there. At the time of writing this blog, a joint Chinese / Russian sample return mission to Phobos named Fobos-Grunt is due to launch in November 2011. If successful, the mission would return samples of Phobos to Earth in August 2014.

This image is a montage of three separate images taken by Viking 1 during one of its flybys of Phobos. The images were taken from ranges between 613 and 633 km on October 19, 1978. The large crater (mostly in darkness) on the upper left of the image is the crater Stickney. Image credit: NASA

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