White silicate-rich soil has been exposed beneath a rusty-red top layer by Spirit’s tires in this photo, taken last month while the rover tried to find a navigable path in the soft Martian sands. Silicate material like this hints at the presence of liquid water in the region’s past. The color here is as it…
Tag: Mars
The Land of the Midnight Sun
The sun dips toward the horizon only to arch away in this composite photo, taken over the course of 11 Martian days (or “sols”) by the Phoenix Mars Lander in July of 2008. Like the polar regions on Earth, the sun does not set for weeks during the summer season in the Martian far…
Spirit-Eye View
This image shows the view from Spirit looking east from its position at the base of a low plateau called “Home Plate” (rising to the right). Loose soil and the loss of one of its six wheels has been posing a difficulty for the rover, and it has spent the past several days trying to…
Feature: Interview With Mars Mission Control
I recently had the chance to ask some questions to the people at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA who are in charge of the Mars rover missions. Behind each of the photos I post here has an entire team of engineers, administrators and talented individuals without whom we would never have seen any…
Deimos Rising
Released today, this photo from the HiRISE camera aboard the MRO shows the smooth face of Deimos, Mars’ smaller moon. (Its larger brother is Phobos, also photographed by the HiRISE in 2008.) Its surface is covered by a fine layer of rocky soil, called regolith, which gives it its smooth texture. Deimos is only…
Dark Dunes
Dark-colored sand dunes mark the terrain on Chasma Boreale, a trough that cuts into the north polar ice fields of Mars. These are known as barchan dunes…like their counterparts on Earth, they have steep edges with “horns” that point in the direction of the wind. The dune material could either be dark sand or…
Evening Shadows
A high mesa in the Ganges Chasma region of Mars casts long shadows in the evening sunlight. Actually part of a larger mesa structure rising out of the chasm, itself part of the giant Mariner Valley that slices across Mars, this marbled plateau (seen in contrast-enhancing false color) was photographed by the HiRISE camera…
Eye in the Sky
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of the Opportunity rover traversing the sand dunes of Meridiani Plain from its position in orbit, 172 miles away. The rover’s tracks can be seen extending away up and right in this image. (North is up.) Click the photo above to see the original cut shot. Opportunity is…
Sailing a Dune Sea
Opportunity’s tracks roll away over the crests of windswept dunes in this image, combined from two photos taken on February 13, 2009 (mission day – “Sol” – 1791). The original images were greyscale. I edited them to somewhat resemble true color. (Click the image for a full-size version.) Opportunity is currently traveling across the Meridiani…
Red Planet Tours Now Departing
As a special treat for today, I’ve assembled a montage of amazing video footage from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera and put it to music by the talented Nicholas Gunn (a fitting track from his Grand Canyon album.) These videos were CG constructed using stereo image data and topographical mapping information from the MRO, recreating…
At Cliff’s Edge
Martian ground slips away into Ganges Chasm, one of many deep troughs that make up the vast Valles Marineris. Valles Marineris (Mariner Valley) is the largest known canyon in the solar system, 7 times deeper than the Grand Canyon and as long as the distance from New York to Los Angeles. It slices across…
Rivers of Sand
Ripples and waves of sediment undulate around stone mesas in this high-resolution (false-color) photo of a crater in Mars’ Arabia Terra, a region at the boundary of highland and lowland. These eroded escarpments are thought to be the shores of an ancient ocean. Now all that laps against them are these serpentine sand dunes….
Lights in the Dark 