After almost three years of travel across the cold, rusty plains of Mars the last remaining functioning rover on Mars has finally reached her goal: the rim of the giant Endeavour Crater! Congratulations Opportunity and the MER team! “Our arrival at this destination is a reminder that these rovers have continued far beyond the original…
Tag: crater
A Tribute to a Space Station and a Milestone for Opportunity!
Opportunity just passed the 30 kilometer mark in its travels on Mars! (That’s FIFTY TIMES the distance originally planned for the rover’s mission!) Go Oppy! 🙂 From the NASA release for this image: NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to take the exposures combined into this view of a wee crater, informally named…
Bounce and Flow
Dark flows run down the slopes of Stevinus A crater on the Moon in this detail of an image from the LRO’s camera. Large boulders that have rolled downhill appear to have interrupted the flow in at least one spot in this image. It’s still not exactly known whether these features in Stevinus A are…
From the LITD Archives: Sinking the Shot
Alan Shepard may have played some moon golf during his visit in 1971 but even he wouldn’t have been up to par with this course. 😉 This photo shows the trail of a house-sized (33-foot-wide) lunar boulder that has rolled downhill and come to rest inside the rim of a crater. The image was taken…
Messages from Mercury
It’s been over two months since the MESSENGER spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mercury, back on March 18, and it’s been enthusiastically returning image after image of our solar system’s innermost planet at a unprecedented rate. Which, of course, is just fine with me! The image above shows Mercury’s southern hemisphere and the bright rays…
Yes, They’re Real
The craters Spitteler and Holberg are prominently featured in this new image from the MESSENGER spacecraft, in orbit around Mercury. (Spitteler, about 42 miles wide, is the one on the left.) These two craters were previously observed by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974 but MESSENGER’s close polar orbit gives scientists a new look. The craters…
Look Inside a Lunar Crater
The crater shown above is located in the lunar highlands and is filled with and surrounded by boulders of all sizes and shapes. It is approximately 550 meters (1800 feet) wide yet is still considered a small crater, and could have been caused by either a direct impact by a meteorite or by an ejected…
Catchin’ Some Rays
One of the newest images from MESSENGER, now nice and comfy in orbit around Mercury, is of the bright Debussy crater and part of its extensive system of surrounding ejecta rays. The crater’s jagged central peak can be seen in this top-down view from the spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera (NAC). Also, here’s a new image of…
Mars à la Ansel Adams
Opportunity panorama of Santa Maria Crater rim. © Stuart Atkinson. As Opportunity wraps up her stay at Santa Maria crater, Stuart Atkinson leaves us with this wonderful “Ansel Adams style” panorama of the crater’s rim and dune-carpeted interior. “I’m very, very jealous of the people who will one day make a pilgrimage to this…
An Opportunity From Above
The eye in the sky sees all…especially when that eye is the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter! Here’s another great image – this time in color! – of the crater known as Santa Maria, taken from over 150 miles above the Martian surface by the MRO…and if you look carefully at the lower…
Lunar Highlands
In another rare oblique-angle view from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter we get a look at the hilly highland terrain around a lunar crater called Vertregt J. The image above shows a shadow being cast by a cratered ridge…check out the image at right for a larger zoomable view of the region. (This area is on…
A Peak Inside
Here’s a close-up look at the central peak of our moon’s Aitken Crater, part of an image captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 11, 2010. Taken at an angle, this view offers a nice sense of relief and perspective on a lunar feature not normally visible in direct-overhead shots. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has…
Lights in the Dark 