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Mars has two tiny irregularly shaped moons named Phobos and Deimos

The dark cratered satellites resemble captured carbonaceous asteroids

Mars is orbited by two small, dark moons named Phobos and Deimos, discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall. Phobos measures just 22 kilometres across while Deimos is only 12 kilometres wide, leading astronomers to believe both are former asteroids captured by Martian gravity.

Phobos over Mars' limb by HRSC
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum) ยท CC BY-SA 3.0 igo ยท licence ยท source

Where this comes from

NASA Science

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Tags: mars, phobos, deimos

Mars has two tiny irregularly shaped moons named Phobos and Deimos: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
The dark cratered satellites resemble captured carbonaceous asteroids. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
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Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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