NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been flying our the red planet for the last 20 years, beaming back images of its surface captured by its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.
This week, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which oversees Mars missions, shared the 100,000th image taken by HiRISE and posted it along with a selection of other Mars images snapped by the camera over the last two decades.
You can see them in the post below.
And you thought it was hard to scroll through all the photos on your phone…
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has snapped its 100,000th image of the surface with its HiRISE camera. More on this milestone image: https://t.co/71CuPgO1Ep pic.twitter.com/4IBr7sNGQ3
The remarkable images include everything from impact craters and sand dunes to ice deposits and even potential landing sites for future human missions. It’s worth noting that many HiRISE images don’t show Mars’ expected reddish hue because color processing balances the surface tones with the camera’s blue-green and infrared bands.
The 100,000th image, which we’ve embedded at the top of this page, was captured in October and shows mesas (flat-topped hills or plateaus with steep sides) and dunes within Syrtis Major, a region about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Jezero Crater, which is currently being explored by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
Scientists are now analyzing the image in a bid to better understand the source of windblown sand that gets trapped in the region’s landscape, and which eventually form dunes.
“HiRISE hasn’t just discovered how different the Martian surface is from Earth, it’s also shown us how that surface changes over time,” MRO project scientist Leslie Tamppari said on the space agency’s website, adding: “We’ve seen dune fields marching along with the wind and avalanches careening down steep slopes.”
The subject of the milestone image was suggested by a high school student through the HiWish site, which allows anyone to suggest parts of Mars to study.
“Rapid data releases, as well as imaging targets suggested by the broader science community and public, have been a hallmark of HiRISE,” said the camera’s principal investigator, Shane Byrne, of the University of Arizona in Tucson. “One hundred thousand images just like this one have made Mars more familiar and accessible for everyone.”
The MRO has enough fuel to support operations until the mid-2030s, so we can look forward to seeing plenty more stunning images from the spacecraft, giving scientists the chance to learn even more about the distant planet.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.