Below 8 fantastic pictures taken from the NASA website. The pictures have been taken randomly: some are very recent while others are more then 10 years old. Very interesting the gif image which shows the clouds floating across the Martian sky.
Spirit’s Panoramic Camera captured the rover’s Instrument Deployment Device above as it moved to get a closer look at an outcrop of rocks named Hillary. Spirit, and its twin rover Opportunity, have been exploring the red planet for more than three years.
Image credit: NASA, Cornell Univ., JPL and M. Di Lorenzo et al.
Dark dunes-accumulations of wind blown sand-cover part of crater’s floor, and contrast with the surrounding bright-colored outcrops. The extreme close-up view reveals a thumbprint-like texture of smaller ridges and troughs covering the surfaces of the larger dunes. These smaller ripples are also formed and shaped by blowing wind in the thin atmosphere of Mars.
One puzzling question is why the dunes are dark compared with the relative bright layered material contained within the crater. The probable answer is that the source of the dark sand is not local to this crater; rather, this topographic depression has acted as a sand trap.
This image was originally released Oct. 24, 2007.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
When the sun starts shining on it in the spring, the ice on the smooth surface of the dune cracks and escaping gas carries dark sand out from the dune below, often creating beautiful patterns. On the rough surface between the dunes, frost is trapped behind small sheltered ridges.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.
More information and image products: HiRISE
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Caption: Candy Hansen
Although it might be hard to tell, this group of dunes is very near the central pit of a 35-kilometer-wide impact crater. Data from other instruments indicate the presence of clay-like materials in the rock exposed in the central pit.
This image was acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument aboard MRO on April 27, 2009, at 15:16 local Mars time. It is a stereo pair with image ESP_013319_1685.
The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 52 centimeters (20.5 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 156 centimeters (61.4 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Additional image products: HiRISE
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Caption: Nicole Baugh
Researchers used the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Feb. 2, 2017, during the 1,598th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars, to take the 41 images combined into this scene. The mosaic has been white-balanced so that the colors of the rock and sand materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. The view extends from west-southwest on the left to north-northwest on the right. The faint horizon in the distance beyond Ireson Hill is part of the rim of Gale Crater. The rover’s Sol 1598 location is mapped at https://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/2017/curiositys-traverse-map-through-sol-1598 .
Figure A is an annotated version with scale bars indicating dimensions at two distances from the rover. The nearer scale bar, in meters, refers to features near the base of the hill, about 46 feet (14 meters) away from the camera. The farther one, in centimeters, refers to features at the top of the hill, about 85 feet (26 meters) from the camera.
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the Mastcam. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover.
More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University
The color and brightness variations are likely due to surface coatings of bright dust and dark sand. There is no evidence that these flows are currently active, but they may have been active only millions of years ago. These flows may well contain ice today in their interiors, as confirmed in places by the subsurface radar experiment on MRO.
This is a stereo pair with ESP_014058_1450.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
The filter combination used to take this image allows false color images to be generated that are similar to what the human eye would see, but with the colors slightly exaggerated. Because Mars is farther from the Sun than the Earth is, the Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it appears in a sunset seen from the Earth. The terrain in the foreground is the rock outcrop “Jibsheet”, a feature that Spirit investigated for several weeks. The floor of Gusev crater is visible in the distance, and the Sun is setting behind the wall of Gusev some 80 kilometers (50 miles) in the distance.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell