Another Martian Avalanche

The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured another great image of an avalanche on Mars:

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
The images shows a cloud of dust caused by frozen carbon dioxide breaking loose from the top of a large cliff (lower-left corner of the image) and carrying additional debris from the cliff face with [...]

Spirit Digs Up Soft Soil

When the wheels of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit dug into a patch of ground on its way to getting stuck, it exposed the color variations shown in this false color image taken on sol 1892:

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University
For a sense of scale, the two rocks near the upper right corner of this view [...]

Free Spirit

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover website has a new Free Spirit page tracking the efforts to get Spirit “unstuck” from its sand trap.
Engineers are mixing diatomaceous Earth and clay in the on-earth rover testbed to attempt to recreate conditions similar to the ones in which Spirit has gotten stuck on Mars so that a sequence of [...]

Opportunity’s Shadow

This self-portrait of Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was taken on sol 180 in July 2004 as the rover began it’s descent into Endurance Crater:
Image credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, JPL, NASA
Endurance seems so long ago, and Opportunity has continued on to Victoria Crater and ultimately will attempt to reach Endeaver Crater after a two year, [...]

A Passion for Mars

My son Brian sent a copy of “A Passion for Mars” by Andrew Chaikin as a Father’s Day gift. It covers everything from the early Mariner missions to Spirit and Opportunity and beyond.
I really enjoy Chaikin’s writing, and especially liked “A Man on the Moon“, his earlier book on the Apollo program that served [...]

Sunset on Another World

Another of my favorites – a sunset on Mars as captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on May 19th, 2005:
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

If you click on the image to see a larger version, you can clearly see the sun sinking behind the rim of Gusev crater in the distance.