QUESTION: My question is since Mars has two moons does that mean that the tides would be three hours instead of six hours? ANSWER from Bruce Jakosky on May 21, 1997: The two Mars moons, Phobos and Deimos, orbit Mars nearly in the plane of its equator. Phobos goes around once every 7.7 hours, and Deimos every 30.2 hours. As a result, you would think that Phobos would raise a high and a low tide twice every 7.7 hours, and Deimos twice every 30.2 hours--each would raise two high and two low tides each time it orbits. However, the raising and lowering of the tides results from the movement of the satellite RELATIVE to the surface. And, since Mars itself rotates on its axis once every 24.6 hours, the movement becomes much more complicated. As seen by a person standing on the equator, Phobos would go around once every 11.2 hours (in other words, by the time Phobos went around once, Mars would have rotated a little bit and Phobos would need to go further to catch up with the person on the surface). Deimos, because it goes around in a period longer than 24.6 hours, would appear to a person on the surface to go around in the opposite direction, once every 4.4 days. As you can see, the tides would become quite complicated. Of course, Phobos and Deimos are both very small and they do not have very much mass. As a result, the tides that they raise would be very small and extremely difficult to detect. And, there are no oceans on Mars to show the effects of the tides easily; the tides do show up in movement of the solid rock of the planet (as they do on the Earth), but that movement is much smaller than the movement if water were present.