MARS

he High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit drove off that lander platform in January 2004 and spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles to the east. Another recent image from HiRISE, taken on Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA's Phoenix Mars...Read Full Story

Some images of stark Martian landscapes provide visual appeal beyond their science value, including a recent scene of wind-sculpted features from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This enhanced-color image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater in Noachis Terra, Mars. Dunes and sand ripples of various shapes and sizes display the natural beauty created by physical processes. The area covered in the image is about...Read Full Story

Winter Wonderland : Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover entering its ninth year operating on the Red Planet, has returned this view from its winter resting place on the rim of Endeavour Crater. Part of a larger 360-degree panorama still being collected, this composite of smaller images looks north toward the stretch of Endeavour's rim known as Cape York, which forms an arc across the top half of the view. Rippled sand and wind-sculpted formations are visible inside the crater. Opportunity...Read Full Story

One of NASA's twin Grail spacecraft has returned its first unique picture of the far side of the moon, an image that shows shadowed craters at the moon's south pole. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech View full size image A gravity-mapping spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed home its first video of the lunar far side — a view people on Earth never see. The new video was captured by one of NASA's twin Grail probes using a novel camera called MoonKAM, which will eventually be used by students on...Read Full Story

Eight years after landing on Mars for what was planned as a three-month mission, NASA's enduring Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is working on what essentially became a new mission five months ago. Opportunity reached a multi-year driving destination, Endeavour Crater, in August 2011. At Endeavour's rim, it has gained access to geological deposits from an earlier period of Martian history than anything it examined during its first seven years. It also has begun an investigation of the...Read Full Story