Astronomy Picture of the Day - Small Moon Deimos

NASA ^ | 7 Sep, 2024 | Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

[alexander_busek]

You could throw rocks from Deimos have them fall on Mars. Hint: throw them in the direction Deimos came from.

Nope, would never work.

Or do you think that people on the I.S.S. could de-orbit simply by shoving off from the space station?

Throwing a rock as hard as you can from Deimos - in the retrograde direction - would merely place the rock into a slightly lower orbit (one with one apsis touching Deimos' orbit, and with the other apsis maybe 1 km lower).

HINT: It would take about as much energy to de-orbit from Deimos and impact on the surface of Mars as it would take to blast off from the surface of Mars and reach Deimos.

Regards,

[alexander_busek]

Moving Deimos in that matter (either with or without first "coring" it) would be an extremely tricky matter - like maneuvering a "dusty bunny."

Deimos is an assemblage of dust and rubble, barely held together by its weak self-gravity.

Regards,

[minnesota_bound]

About the size of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.