NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

[Rick]

Probe spies landers on Red Planet

New images have been released of past and present US landing craft on the surface of Mars taken by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) probe.

The Spirit rover, which touched down in 2004, as well as both Viking landers, sent to explore the Red Planet in the 1970s, can be seen in the new images.

Besides providing new portraits of the robot emissaries, the images offer new information on the surrounding terrain.

Go see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6211870.stm

(...and the MRO site at http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ is worth a look, too.)

[Tony G]

Rick,
this is also on APOD today and is a lovely clear image of Spirit.
I also heard that they may have found flowing liquid on Mars(don't know whethers it is water or not) by comparing images taken of the same area over a period of years.

Tony G

[Rick]

Yeah, I saw the APOD first, but the BBC site pointed out the Viking images as well, and I like to go back to see the original press releases if possible, as they often have high-resolution images.

It'll be interesting if they manage to spot Pathfinder/Sojourner and the various other less successful probes. The resolution is amazing.

[Rick]

I also heard that they may have found flowing liquid on Mars(don't know whethers it is water or not) by comparing images taken of the same area over a period of years.

See here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia09027.html

[Ian]

seems a bit of a leap of faith to say it's water. I'm sure there are other candidate fluids more likely to be found on the surface of mars than water...

[Rick]

Yeah. It's an area they've been watching, and it looks very like some of the other previous flows they've spotted, but that's about it...

[Rick]

Two animations released by Nasa allow viewers to "hang-glide" over the terrain currently being explored by the US space agency's Mars rovers.

The animations were created using pictures taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6449031.stm

MRO: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/

[mickw]

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.
More:  http://spaceflightnow.com:80/news/n0803/03avalanches/

[Rick]

NASA has released a rather nice snap of a Martian "avalanche" - a cascade of ice and dust tumbling down a slope near the Red Planet's north pole captured by its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on 19 February.

HiRISE has been repeatedly perusing selected Martian sites to track seasonal changes, NASA explains, but wasn't in this case focused on the 700 metre tall cliff.

Candice Hansen, HiRISE deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, said: "We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous."

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/04/martian_avalanche/

[Rick]

The ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has identified extensive Martian glaciers buried under "protective blankets of rocky debris".

The glaciers - lying in the Hellas Basin region of Mars's southern hemisphere - stretch for "dozens of miles from edges of mountains or cliffs". Their discovery solves the mystery of the "aprons" spotted in the 1970s by Viking orbiters, described as "gently sloping areas containing rocky deposits at the bases of taller geographical features".

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/21/martian_glaciers/

[mickw]

Time to get the 3D glasses out 

Other Mars-orbiting cameras have taken 3-D views of Mars, but the HiRISE camera – the most powerful camera ever to orbit another planet – can resolve features as small as one meter, or 40 inches, across.

"It's really remarkable to see Martian rocks and features on the scale of a person in 3-D," said Alfred McEwen of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, HiRISE principal investigator. "The level of detail is just much, much greater than anything previously seen from orbit."

More:   http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/anaglyph/

Here's a link to making/obtaining 3D glasses
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/sun/3D_Glasses.html

[mickw]

OK, not really, but................

Signs of Spring on Mars

A Martian orbiter has spotted seasonal footprints of spring creeping up on the red planet.

Seasonal polar caps formed from carbon dioxide have begun vaporizing or changing directly from solid ice to gas, and have kicked off a chain of events detected by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090331-mars-spring.html

[Mike]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1206382/NASA-captures-vivid-shot-sand-dune-Martian-crater.html

[doug]

     The top shot of the crater also makes an excellent wallpaper, Mike. 

[Rick]

TUCSON, Ariz. -- The high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned a dramatic oblique view of the Martian crater that a rover explored for two years.

The new view of Victoria Crater shows layers on steep crater walls, difficult to see from straight overhead, plus wheel tracks left by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between September 2006 and August 2008. The orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera shot it at an angle comparable to looking at landscape from an airplane window. Some of the camera's earlier, less angled images of Victoria Crater aided the rover team in choosing safe routes for Opportunity and contributed to joint scientific studies.

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20090812.html

Full images: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_013954_1780