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.

Io’s Tvashtar Volcano

To get things going again, I thought I’d start posting some of my favorite space images – and what could be better than this animated sequence of 5 images of the plume of Tvashtar volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io:
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
This sequence of images was captured by the [...]

Another Extension for Spirit and Opportunity

The twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been given another six-month extension (which will take the mission almost a full year past the original 90-day plan following an earlier five-month extension).
The rovers are just emerging from 12-day communications blackout period when Mars passed nearly behind the sun, and have also passed the winter [...]

Elevator:2010

The Spaceward Foundation has announced their Elevator:2010 challenge. Similar to the $10 million Ansari X Prize, the competition is intended to jump-start technologies critical to the creation of a space elevator, and is targeting student groups. The initial 3 competions are for climber prototypes to race up a 60-meter ribbon, developing better materials for the [...]

Moon Landing 35th Anniversay

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing – take a look at the incredible compilation information over at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and the Project Apollo Archive. Be sure to also check out the this fantastic QuickTime 3D panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site (as well as the one [...]

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