New Images from Mars Orbiter Show Sites of Fiction Film’s Mars Landings

NASA Mars Orbiter Views Sites of Fiction Film's Mars Landings

This May 2015 image from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location on Mars associated with the best-selling novel and Hollywood movie, “The Martian.” It is in a region called Acidalia Planitia, at the landing site for the science-fiction tale’s Ares 3 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

New images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal details of real regions on Mars where a new Hollywood movie, “The Martian,” places future astronaut adventures.

The novel of the same name used actual locations on Mars for the landing sites for its “Ares 3” and “Ares 4” missions. The landing sites for “Ares 3” is on a Martian plain named Acidalia Planitia. The base for the “Ares 4” mission was set inside a crater named Schiaparelli.

(Left: In the novel and movie “The Martian,” an astronaut’s adventures take him to the rim of Mawrth Crater. This image from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the nature of this terrain. Right: This image from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location associated with the novel and movie, “The Martian.” It is the tale’s planned landing site for the Ares 4 mission.)

Views of these two sites, and other locations pertinent to the fictional story, are in the latest weekly release of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Each observation by HiRISE covers an area of several square miles and shows details as small as a desk. More than 39,000 of them have been taken since the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars in 2006.

1 Comment on "New Images from Mars Orbiter Show Sites of Fiction Film’s Mars Landings"

  1. at the web page: http://www.curiosityrover.com/
    and the picture:
    MASTCAM LEFT 1100ML0048710390500523C00_DXXX
    sol 1100 08:38:45 A.M. LMST taken: 2015 SEP 10 04:29:09 UTC released: 2015 OCT 04 04:03:59 UTC size:1200×1200 (302329 bytes)
    bearing 4.82° (N), elevation -3.10°

    we can see a kind of steps at the Dune, pay attenction and you will see it. Weird

Leave a comment

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.