A Martian dust devil… or at this size, a tornado. We have seen these at much smaller scales from the rovers on the ground, but it would be exciting to see one of this size from the ground. This image was returned from the Mars Recon Orbiter from almost directly above and this spiral probably measures about 30km wide for an idea of scale.
The most common force for change on Mars is wind. Dust-devils and dust storms are quite common and they result in patterns and textures as seen here. Making this image even more interesting is the frost developing on one side of these dunes as the Martian winter takes hold.
The Ganges Chasma is a side canyon at one end of the vast Valles Marineris trough system of Mars. This image was returned by ESA’s Mars Express, brought to our attention by Bill Dunford’s Riding with Robots. The image above is a 2560×1800 wallpaper. Download the 1440×900 here.
On the Phoenix Mission’s 152nd Sol (a Martian day) the lander has fallen silent and mission engineers have been unable to communicate with it for over a week. This was expected as the Martian sunlight is less and less as the season changes. The sun is simply not providing enough energy to replenish its solar batteries. There is an outside chance that communications might resume again, but it would be a fleeting opportunity at best.
In all, the mission prooved the existence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface; we saw (with our own eyes) Martian ice melting; it was the first time an atomic force microscope was used outside the bonds of Earth; the discovery that Martian soil may not be that different from the Earth’s and that growing plants in it may not be at all difficult; Phoenix found trace amounts of salt which could be nutrients for life; and finally calcium carbonate which suggests a past existence of liquid water on the surface of an anchient Mars.
And who could forget this image. Not too shabby.
How do I not see these things? This was from back in 2006. I don’t recall ever hearing of this. It is an IMAX on the two Mars rover missions Spirit and Opportunity. Coincidentally, Paul Newman who passed recently apparently had something to do with it as well. I assume narration.
These above images of Mars were composited by Emily Lakdawalla and display a staggering improvement over what we have seen published over and over again since the Viking missions took place in the mid-70’s (see below). You may be familiar with the bottom image as it is one of the few images of Mars taken in a crescent phase. I never would have guessed that by simply re-compiling the data with today’s everyday image software, it was possible to bring out the real beauty hidden within the data.
“That’s my colourized version of the already-classic “Midnight Sun” image created by the Phoenix team, showing the path of the Sun across the sky as seen by the Phoenix lander. Up near the martian north pole Phoenix is in the martian Land of The Midnight Sun, and the Sun never sets, it just dips down towards and then rolls over the southern horizon at midnight before climbing up again…”
Taken from phoenixpics.wordpress.com, a nice Phoenix fan site featuring the best images of the Phoenix mission thus far.
Don’t think we ever posted a true color of the Martian surface from the Phoenix mission yet. This was stitched together by James Canvin. Hopefully the next time we post this view it will be covered with Martian frost. Just in time for Christmas!
See The Planetary Blog on the results from Phoenix. Results could actually be the opposite of what we are hoping for…
Emily Lakdawalla comments on the Phoenix hub-bub which may have been over-blown.
Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society will host a web stream on this matter Wednesday night.
See the full story and larger surrounding area image here. Larger image includes the parachute, back shell and heat shield.
I cannot stop looking at this animation. The first frame was taken on the 8th sol (a Mars day) and the second around the 31st sol. As you can see from the animation, it seems that some mystery material is either growing, moving or multiplying around one of the legs of the Phoenix lander. The most likely source is frost building up on what would be a very cold surface, however the only issue is that it doesn’t look exactly like frost and it hasn’t appeared on any of the other legs.
Image note: We added an artificial fade from 1 frame to frame 2 and scaled the original image to around 300%. Due to artifacts from increasing the scale and compression we added some noise to smooth out the overall appearance.
