The Exploration Rover Opportunity, moving steadily across the low dunes of the Meridiani Plains while its sister Spirit is mired in soft sands half a planet away (temporarily we hope!), takes a photo of its eventual destination: the 14-mile-wide crater Endeavour, still several miles away. The mountainous northern rim of the crater is visible…
Category: Mars
Devil in the Skies
Spirit captures a dust devil in the distance on camera in this image from a few days ago. I colorized it to enhance detail (and make it a little more “Mars-y”) from the original raw file. Dust devils are common this time of year at Spirit’s location. They are cause by warmer air near…
Dividing Line
At some moment between May of 2003 and September of 2007 a cluster of meteorites struck the Martian sands, excavating craters and blasting the rusty dust away to reveal the dark underlying surface layers. Most likely the result of one object that broke up in the thin atmosphere of Mars, its pieces landing near…
Chaos Crunch
No, it’s not the back of a Nestle Crunch bar…it’s a photo of a region on Mars known as “Ariadnes Colles”. This lumpy, rock-filled landscape is called chaos terrain, and in other areas of Mars is usually attributed to water erosion but in this case it’s believed that wind is the source. The image above…
Waves of Sand
Like rust-colored ocean waves frozen in mid-motion, miniature sand dunes sit at the base of Pioneer Mound in this panoramic image, taken by the Spirit rover last month and assembled here by James Canvin. Spirit has recently started traveling again after a two-week hiatus while engineers on the MER team tried to diagnose some…
On The Road Again
The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit resumed driving this past Thursday after over two weeks of inactivity at its position northeast of Home Plate. The image above shows a small hill informally known as “Von Braun”, and will be investigated more in the months ahead. Spirit has been behaving erratically this month, resetting itself, forgetting…
Focus!
At first glance it may seem as if the University of Arizona’s HiRISE camera needs a little focus adjustment. But notice the few scattered little impact craters and dune ripples in this image and you’ll realize there’s nothing wrong with the focus—it’s the surface of Mars that’s blurry here!
Do You Heart Mars?
Well, Mars hearts you. This 1.25-mile-long crater was photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on February 26, 2008. It lies on the western edge of the Hydaspis Chaos region, an area of jumbled depressions thought to be caused by the sudden release of groundwater. Click to see a larger shot of the area. Other heart-shaped…
Intersection
The sinuous knife edge of three dune ridges connect in this photo from the HiRISE camera aboard the MRO. Click for a higher resolution version…the texture of the surface sand becomes more visible. Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Down the RAT Hole
Opportunity takes a moment to survey its recent work: a circular etching made upon an outcropping of rock amongst the dunes of Meridiani Plains. Both rovers are equipped with a robotic arm that holds three important diagnostic tools mounted on a swiveling “fist”. A microscopic imaging camera, a spectrometer and a rock abrasion tool –…
A Fresh Wound
This image from the HiRISE camera on the MRO shows an impact crater that is estimated to have been formed some time between February and July of 2005. This feature is in an equatorial highland region of Mars. The colors here are not true to life…they indicate material composition and density more than actual…
A Tangled Web
Criscrossing the south polar region of Mars, cracks and ridges line the frozen ground, broken by the occasional spray of dark material spewed by a geyser of released subsurface gases. These lines are referred to as “spider troughs” due to their resemblance to cobwebs, as seen from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This image was…
Lights in the Dark 