Phobos grooves and impact craters: A stereographic analysis

Abstract

Phobos parallel grooves were first observed on Viking images 38 years ago and since then they have been greatly debated leading to several formation hypotheses. Nevertheless, none of them have been favoured and widely accepted. In this work, we provide a different approach, assuming that Phobos grooves can be the expression of fracture planes, and deriving their spatial distribution and orientation on 3D reconstructions, we point out that any origin related only to craters at Phobos surface should be ruled out, since the majority of the grooves is unrelated to any craters now present at its surface. This raises the intriguing possibility that such grooves, if expression of fracture planes, are remnant features of an ancient parent body from which Phobos could have originated. Such scenario has never been considered for Phobos, though this origin was already proposed for the formation of 433 Eros grooves (Buczkowski, D.L., Barnouin-Jha, O.S., Prockter, L.M. [2008]. Icarus 193, 39). If this idea holds true, the observed groove distribution could be explained as the result of possible major impacts on the larger parent body, which were inherited by the "Phobos shard".