A dust storm in Olympia Planum's north polar dune fields was triggered by a late Martian summer cold front. As the northern polar cap shrinks fast, it releases cold air that sometimes moves south, like on Earth. These cold fronts strengthen in late summer and early fall due to temperature differences. Occasionally, they cause big dust storms covering large areas or the whole planet. A similar event happened a month later, leading to a global dust storm lasting most of 2018. The image, taken on April 3, 2018, by the Mars Express HRSC camera during orbit, shows natural colors. [ see full image by Aster Cowart ]
Hope for Mars
Nothing really. Just a gorgeous image of Mars from the UAE Hope mission.
Morning and Night on Mars
Yeah. Um… Wow. Nice Job NASA. I’ll just copy/paste how The Planetary Society explained it:
“NASA's Curiosity team made this artistic interpretation of the rover's view from high up Mt. Sharp by combining pictures taken at different times of day and adding colors to bring out the contrast. The first set of images was taken at 8:30 a.m local Mars time on Nov. 16, and the second set at 4:10 p.m. The morning light is highlighted in blue, while the afternoon is orange.”
China's Zhurong Mars Rover
How adorable is this. The Zhurong rover placed a camera on the ground, backed up and took a selfie next to the landing platform it emerged from last month.
We don’t post enough Mars Scenic Views
I mean… we don’t post enough in general.
Phobos over mount Sharp
Taken by the Curiosity rover. This is one of Mars tiny moons as seen from the ground. Impressive as it is only 14 long and you can actually see its shape from the surface. See Phobos below for reference.
Colorized View of Perseverance Landing
An artificially colorized view of Jezero Crater, showing the bird’s eye view of Perseverance screaming towards Mars’s surface. The above image was enhanced by Kevin Gill into full color, taking images captured by Perseverance’s Lander Vision System Camera just after the heat shield was released.
The First Ever Real-Time Video from Another Planet
When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why: this is the first real-time video taken from another world since 1972, and this is the first ever taken on another planet.
Most “video” you see from other planetary missions are actually animations. Multiple image frames taken over long periods of time. Then someone registers the images to one another to smooth out the motion and then you have animated photographic video. Additionally, these seconds long clips are usually of events that actually took hours or even days to play out.
That being said, seeing the Martian surface move below in real time, the parachute deploying against an alien sky, and the rover being dropped to the surface from the Sky Crane is absolutely amazing. Perhaps my favorite moment is when the Sky Crane flies off behind a cloud of dust looks just like (and actually is) an alien spacecraft visiting an alien world.
Pretty Cool for a Stationery Lander
Martian weather and drifting clouds as seen from the InSight lander.
Mars Panorama from Curiosity
This might be the prettiest Mars pan yet.