Water has been found on Mars! (Yes, again.) In what’s turned into the biggest space news of the day, today ESA (and that’s pronounced “eesa”, you don’t need to spell it out) announced that the Italian-run radar experiment aboard its Mars Express orbiter has provided the first good evidence of liquid water present beneath the…
Tag: Mars Express
ESA Grabs Glimpses of Mars’ Groovy Moon
This animation is comprised of three images acquired by ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft on Sept. 12, 2017 with its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). It shows parts of the grooved and pitted surface of Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two natural satellites. The original images were captured in greyscale; I added color based on other…
Ice May Be Buried Beneath These Ancient Martian Hills
Scientists have been hunting for evidence of water on Mars ever since we started looking at the Red Planet through telescopes. But Mars does have water, and lots of it; solid water in the form of ice locked up in its polar caps and buried under its surface. And, if observations made by ESA’s Mars Express…
Mars Express Gets the Delta Blues
ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has imaged yet more evidence of a watery past on Mars with what appears to be the remains of a river delta, seen here, located just within the 40-mile (65-km) -wide Eberswalde Crater. Formed over 3.7 billion years ago, Eberswalde Crater was in the top 4 list of possible landing sites…
Martian Motion
Can’t see the video below? Watch on YouTube here. The Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla got a chance to hone her animation skills further with this cool sequence showing clouds drifting over the surface of Mars, made from images taken by the Mars Express orbiter back in October 2010. Awesome! The region shown here is known…
“A boulder as big as a house”
A high-res image of Mars’ moon Phobos, acquired on January 9 by ESA’s Mars Express, shows a large boulder on the irregularly-shaped moon’s southern hemisphere. It rests near the edge of a large crater…when I rotated the image it looked as if it should just start rolling backwards and slide right over the edge! (The…
Turning Fear Around
Here’s a quick animation of Mars’ moon Phobos, made from five images – released today – taken by ESA’s Mars Express during its flyby on January 9, 2011. Passing by the 14-mile-wide moon at a distance of about 62 miles (100 km), Mars Express took images in five HRSC channels…I combined those to create this….
Northern Exposure
Here’s a look at Mars’ north polar ice cap as seen by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter on September 30, 2010, edited by astrophotographer and digital artist Mike Malaska. The original image was taken from an altitude of 6,627 miles above Mars. See how he created this image on his Flickr photostream here, and check out…
Heeeere’s Phobos!
After much anticipation, this just in: an amazingly detailed image from the March 7 flyby of Phobos! As Phil Plait might say, click to emphobosize. 😉 See more info and a couple more similar images on the ESA’s Mars Express site. Phobos sure has an interesting surface texture. It’s almost as if boulders have been…
Phobos Flyby Success
No need to fear, Phobos is here! (That’s a particularly bad pun on Phobos being the Greek god of fear……er…nevermind.) Yesterday’s flyby of Mars’ tiny moon was a success, as the animation below shows using actual data from the event. This latest pass only utilized the ASPERA instrument, which studies the way Phobos interacts with…
Focus on Phobos
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has begun a series of flybys of Mars’ largest – albeit still very small – moon, Phobos. Begun on February 16 (2010) Mars Express will perform closer and closer approaches until, on March 3, it will pass by at an altitude of only 31 miles, giving us the most…
Fear and Dread
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express has captured footage of Mars’ two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, passing each other in what is known as a “mutual event”. Although the moons themselves are in no special positions the images are noteworthy, being the first time the moons have been photographed passing each other. Mars Express’…
Lights in the Dark 