[Editor’s note: See update.]
Here are the facts about the Phobos orbit crossing today [November 16].
The orbit crossing is not a Phobos flyby. In fact, we did our best to ensure that Phobos would be at the farthest possible point away from TGO when we cross the moon’s orbit. The moon will basically be on the other side of Mars when our spacecraft crosses its orbit.
This results in two crossings today: one around 14:30 UT and a second at 20:00 UT (15:30 and 21:00 CET, respectively). On each crossing of Phobos’ orbit, TGO will ‘miss’ the Phobos orbit by 23 km (and 120 minutes) and 10 km (and 200 minutes), respectively.
Note that the diameter of Phobos is about 20 km, so these passes by the orbit are very, very close!
Over the last few days, we adapted the phase of our orbit to ensure maximum ‘outphasing’ of Phobos and TGO, so today there is actually nothing for the flight control team to do but watch and monitor.
The crossing is taking place around apocentre (point of farthest approach to Mars); remember that our pericentre (point of closest approach) remains on the order of 100 km from the martian surface, actually in the atmosphere, which is how we are obtaining the aerobraking effect. [More at link]