Phobos Could Become Mars's Rings Sooner Than Thought
Two independent analyses indicate Phobos, a weak, rubble‑pile moon, could shed surface material and be torn apart into rings long before crossing Mars’s Roche limit, via staged mass‑loss events around 2.25–2.09 Mars radii and possibly a sesquinary catastrophe; the MMX mission (launch 2026) will study its interior to better determine its fate.
