Browsing tag
Marking its 15th anniversary since launch, one of the oldest spacecraft at the Red Planet has provided glimpses of dust devils, avalanches, and more. Since…
Other orbiters will continue relaying data from Mars surface missions for a two-week period. From February 17 to February 29, 2020, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter…
NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where…
Dust storms are common on Mars. But every decade or so, something unpredictable happens: A series of runaway storms breaks out, covering the entire planet…
Side-by-side movies shows how dust has enveloped the Red Planet, courtesy of the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The…
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, acquired May 13, 2018 during winter at the South Pole of Mars, shows a carbon dioxide ice cap…
One of the most actively changing areas on Mars are the steep edges of the North Polar layered deposits. This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance…
Sand dunes often accumulate in the floors of craters. In this region of Lyot Crater, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a field of classic…
This HiRISE image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captures a new, dated (within about a decade) impact crater that triggered a slope streak. When…
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a close-up of a trough, along with channels draining into the depression. Some HiRISE images show strange-looking formations….
Craters can tell scientists a lot about the surfaces of planets, moons and other bodies. Just by determining how circular a given crater is –…
A recent view from Mars orbit of the site where NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission landed on far-northern Mars nearly a decade ago shows that dust…
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows streaks forming on slopes when dust cascades downhill. The dark streak is an area of less…
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows an impact crater looking amusingly like a tadpole because of the valley that was carved by…
This new image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows layers, probably sedimentary in origin, that have undergone extensive erosion in Shalbatana Valles, a prominent…
Some Mars experts are eager and optimistic for a dust storm this year to grow so grand it darkens skies around the entire Red Planet….
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of northern Meridiani Planum shows faults that have disrupted layered deposits. Some of the faults produced a…
This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) targets a portion of a group of honeycomb-textured landforms in northwestern Hellas Planitia, which is part of…