Perseverance rover captures solar eclipse on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover captured footage of Phobos, a tiny natural satellite of Mars, crossing the surface of the Sun.

The footage of the solar eclipse on the Red Planet was obtained on April 2, as the rover moved toward the dried-up delta of an ancient Martian river that is located near the 45-kilometer-long Ezero crater.

Phobos and Deimos are a pair of small natural satellites of Mars. Phobos is about 22 kilometers in diameter and has an irregular shape because the satellite does not have enough mass to turn into a sphere.

The eclipse, filmed by the next-generation Perseverance Mastcam-Z on April 2, the 397th Martian day (or sol), lasted just over 40 seconds. This is much shorter than a normal solar eclipse involving the Earth's Moon.