Martian Avalanche

March 4, 2008 – 1:21 am

The HiRise camera on the Mars Surveillance Orbiter caught an avalanche in progress on the edge of the northern polar cap. Awesome.

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Google Mars

March 13, 2006 – 11:59 pm

Google’s on Mars now. This is a great toy.

There’s a gazetteer built in, so you can go to spacecraft crash landing sites, and geological features. The infrared images from the Mars Odyssey orbiter provide the highest resolution close up.
I hope Google will incorporate images from the Reconnaissance Orbiter as updates.
Very nice, but I’m still not [...]

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Mjolnir to Hammer the Martian Regolith

January 30, 2006 – 11:53 pm

Sending a robot drilling rig to look for subsurface ice on Mars would be a tricky mission. Arizona State University scientist Phil Christensen proposes another way. Launch a quarter ton copper projectile at the mid-latitudes of Mars’ Northern Hemisphere, and look for water in the ejecta from the ten to 25 meter deep crater it [...]

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The View from Husband Hill

September 1, 2005 – 9:42 pm

A QuickTime movie in ‘true’ color made from a panorama stitched together from images taken by the Spirit Rover atop Husband Hill in Gusev Crater, Mars.
Thanks Cornell, JPL, and NASA. You helped cheer me up.

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From the Top of the Hill

August 23, 2005 – 9:45 pm

Spirit, one of the Mars Exploration Rovers, reached the top of Husband Hill. Great view, huh?

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Junk on Mars

February 8, 2005 – 12:00 am

The Mars Rover Opportunity drove up to the wreckage of its discarded heat shield. The shield made a nice divot on the surface.

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Question for the Planetary Scientists

December 23, 2004 – 12:00 am

I’m looking at a high-resolution photo from the Mars Express orbiter of the Mariner Valley, and see a dark, lens-shaped smudge on the left hand side of the image. There’s a crater with ejecta marks at the top of the smudge. Would that be consistent with a recent impact kicking up and depositing darker material [...]

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There’s Always Mars

November 3, 2004 – 12:00 am

Meanwhile, Spirit and Opportunity are still boppin’ away on Mars.
Spirit’s in the hills a couple of miles from where it landed back in January, so it has some great views. I’ve been waiting for these shots.
Until this year, we had to imagine what the scene would be like.

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Mars renders

April 2, 2004 – 12:00 am

Kees Veenenbos made beautiful renders of what a wet Mars may have looked like.
He used radar altimeter data from the Mars Orbiters and fed it into the Terragen program.

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For Soviet Interplanetary Glory!

March 15, 2004 – 12:00 am

Mars 3, the silent Soviet lander, has started radioing reports back to Earth. For some strange reason, the transmissions end up on Live Journal.

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A Red Planet Forever in the Orbit of Science and Dreams

March 13, 2004 – 12:00 am

[ via Boing Boing ] Kim Stanley Robinson essay on Mars for the NYT.

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Mars is Hawaii: without the good surfing, the plants, or the people

March 2, 2004 – 12:00 am

[ via Oliver Morton ] Planetologist Jeffrey Bell doesn’t think much of Mars. If the planetary science crowd gets excited over some feature, Bell harumphs from behind his desk at the University of Hawaii, and points to an analog he says he can find by walking around the campus or by asking a passing vulcanologist.
He [...]

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Not the Mars of Viking, Pathfinder, and MER-A,B

February 19, 2004 – 12:00 am

Kip covers the languages, ethnography, and class systems of some other Mars. Just read it. Brilliant stuff.

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MER-A EXCLUSIVE, MUST CREDIT MER-A (SPIRIT) REPORT

February 15, 2004 – 12:00 am

MER-A (Spirit) and her sister rover are having a bit of a spat. Spirit’s claiming that MER-B (Opportunity) is faking her data. [ Obvious Disclaimer: It's a joke son, a funny. ]

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Olympus Mons - the caldera in close-up

February 13, 2004 – 12:00 am

The caldera of the largest volcano in the the Solar System: detailed images from the ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.

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