[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Curiosity is on the move across Mars — but where is it going? The car-sized rover’s path after 29 Martian days on the surface is shown on the above map. Curiosity is still almost 300 meters from its first major destination, though, a meeting of different types of terrain […]
PASADENA, Calif. — Posing for portraits for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, show spectacular colors in a quartet of images being released today. One image captures the changing hues of Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres as they pass from one season to the next. A wide-angle view in today’s package captures […]
The light peak is Mt. Sharp — an eventual destination of the Curiosity rover. … Curiosity’s is already on the move crossing the intermediate gravel field toward an interesting terrain feature named Glenelg. Curiosity has also already started analyzing its surroundings by zapping a nearby rock with its laser to analyze the chemical composition of […]
TO ZOOM, CLICK ON THE IMAGE. When Curiosity first touched down on Mars, Internet pranksters were quick to mock up photographs of alien life on the alien landscape. But it seems NASA has itself captured something very strange on camera, including a strange white light dancing across the horizon of the red planet, and four […]
[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE, CLICK ON IMAGE] The above image … is a high resolution version of a distant wall of Gale Crater captured by the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars last week. A corresponding true color image exists showing how this scene actually appears on Mars. The robotic Curiosity rover continues to check […]
[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW] You’ve just landed on Mars and opened your eyes — what do you see? If you’re the Curiosity rover, you see a strange gravelly place with a large mountain in the distance. You’ve landed on target near the edge of 150-km wide Gale Crater, with Mount Sharp on […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Just as it captured the Phoenix lander parachuting to Mars in 2008, the HiRise camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) snapped this picture of the Curiosity rover’s spectacular descent toward its landing site on August 5 (PDT). The nearly 16 meter (51 foot) wide parachute and its payload […]
The truth is that only the United States has had the knowledge and moxie to successfully land a vehicle on Mars. We have now done it seven times, and no other nation has really come particularly close. And with the touchdown of the one-ton and highly sophisticated Curiosity, the U.S. has reached a whole new […]
PASADENA, Calif. — About 34 hours from the Mars rover Curiosity’s landing (scheduled for 01:31 am Eastern time on Monday), NASA brought us the latest weather forecast from the surface — dry and cold, with a slight chance of dust. Slight is good. Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a dust storm south […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE for high resolution. Credit: Cristian Fattinnanzi] Skygazers around planet Earth enjoyed the close encounter of planets and Moon in July 15’s predawn skies. And while many saw bright Jupiter next to the slender, waning crescent, Europeans also had the opportunity to watch the ruling gas giant pass behind the lunar disk, occulted […]
