Question

Why does the Earth is having fewer satellites than mars?

Answer 1

Satellites:

Satellites are the astronomical body that revolves around other larger planets or celestial bodies.

Reason for Earth having fewer satellites than mars:

1. During the formation of the solar system, mars were similar to Earth.
2. All terrestrial planets formed inside the frost line and were closer to the Sun, where temperatures are high. In this region, hydrogen compounds, such as water and methane remain gaseous.
3. Thus, the terrestrial planets accreted from planetesimals made of rocks and metals, they ended up too small to capture significant amounts of the abundant hydrogen and helium gas in the solar nebula.
4. Terrestrial planets have smaller mass and weaker gravitational force, which leads to a smaller volume of space for a planet’s gravitational influence to pull more material and create a moon or just capture a moon.
5. The Sun’s gravitational force also plays a significant role which leads inner planets to have fewer moons. Any moon in a planet near the Sun will have an unstable orbit and later may be captured by the Sun.
6. The Earth’s moon formed billions of years ago when our planet collided with a Mars-sized object During the collision some material was ejected and was trapped in Earth’s gravity.
7. This ejected material then merged and formed the Moon. As for Mars, Phobos and Deimos are asteroids captured by the planet’s gravitational influence, and later on, both objects were trapped as satellites.

Hence, the moon we have today was created by a significant collision that occurred during the formation of Earth, but Mars' moons developed differently and are widely thought to be asteroids that Mars once grabbed. One indication that they are not a chunk of Mars is their lack of roundness.