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Astronomers get more than they bargained for, as Mars probe InSight’s instruments detects solar eclipses • The Register

… “During an eclipse, the ground cools. It deforms unevenly, which tilts the instrument,” said Martin van Driel, co-author of the paper, who also works at the ETH Zurich’s Institute of Geophysics. An infrared sensor revealed that the ground cooled by two degrees celsius during just 30 seconds of the eclipse, and shifted just enough to affect the seismometer.

The minuscule tilt might not sound all that useful at first, but the team believes that it could help scientists plot Phobos’ orbit more precisely. That would help future missions like Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency goal to return samples from Phobos.

It’d also help astronomers predict how the irregular-shaped satellite will evolve; it’s slowing down and inching increasingly towards Mars and is expected to come crashing down on the planet’s surface in 30 to 50 million years time.

“We can use this slight slowdown to estimate how elastic and thus how hot the Martian interior is; cold material is always more elastic than hot,” Amir Khan, co-author of the paper, and a member of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Geophysics, concluded.