NASA Spots Huge New Crater on Mars

Scientists using images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, discovered a new crater on the surface of Mars.   The crater was formed by a March 2012 impact and is large enough to cover half of a football field.  

The culprit that created the crater was most likely  a car-size asteroid.  The Martian event is similar to an impact event over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which shattered windows, damaged hundreds of buildings and left more than 1,000 people injured.

Read the complete Science article HERE

Curiosity Flappin in the Wind?

Well its' parachute is at least. From the Discovery.com article:

• Shortly after Curiosities landing, NASA’s orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter managed to photograph not only the parachute, but also the backshell, heat shield, skycrane and counterweights.
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Now the team is using the HiRISE high resolution imaging system to take photos of the same area over a five month period.  What the series shows, that even though the Martian atmosphere is thin, 100 times thinner than Earth's, large surfaces such as the huge areo-braking parachute can still be reacted on if light enough.  

The biggest changes seem to take place from September 8th 2012 and November 30th  of the same year.  During this three month period the rover's discarded 'chute became much less reflective then became more so indicating that at least part of the structure was being moved and flapped by the Martian breeze.      

Full Discovery News article HERE                                                                                                  

NASA's MRO Finds New Craters

In 2010, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's low resolution B&W camera (called the Context-Camera) saw a dark patch that hadn’t been there two years before. The MRO was told to train it's high resolution (HiRISE) camera on the area and found a cluster of four brand new impact craters.
From the Wired Science blog:

• The telephoto image revealed four distinct craters, each ringed with a dark blanket where soil was blasted out in the impact. The crater quartet could have been formed by a single meteorite that broke apart on its way through Mars’ atmosphere.

The MRO finished it main objectives in 2008. NASA extended its lifetime twice. In that time, MRO has transmitted more data to Earth -- 131 trillion bits and more than 70,000 images so far -- than all other interplanetary missions combined.

Wired Science article

HiRISE releases new pictures of Mars

Hey check out these pictures that Shaun Saunders just sent me the link to. They are in an article at cnn.com on the technology page.

The pics are from the University of Arizona, Tucson, using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera mounted on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have just released a bunch of pictures, which show the surface of Mars from the perspective of a plane flying over the surface. Not computer generated, but what it would REALLY look like if were looking out the window of a plane.

The picture in the post is Victoria Crater. There is a link on the article for more pics...spectacular.

Earth & Moon as seen from Mars

Just how amazed were you when you first saw Earth-rise from the Moon during the Apollo mission? One of the most fantastic photographs I can think of. Just to think, on that little blue globe, I am somewhere watching tv of the Apollo and they are taking my picture....So very strange to see just how really small we were. So here is a shot of the Earth AND the Moon from Mars taken by NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera - operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. Do I need to say anything more?

Orbiter's close-ups of Martian moon Phobos

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to take the sharpest images ever of the Martian moon Phobos. This image, taken about 4,200 miles from the moon, shows an area of about 13 miles wide. The most prominent feature on the moon is the Stickney crater (right) which is about 5.6 miles in diameter. Scientists believe that the bluish area on the edge of the Stickney crater indicates a younger area of the moon.

click on article title for more pictures