NASA Mars HiRise Images: Curiosity rover’s parachute flapping in the Martian wind

Credit: Nasa /Caltech

The orbiting HiRISE camera captures the Curiosity rover’s parachute flapping in the Martian wind!

The animation was made from seven images taken over the course of several months; the changes in between each frame are due to changing light conditions, angle of the camera to the ground, and so on.

You can also see the back shell that protected the parachute to the upper right; the distance from the parachute to the back shell is about 50 meters.

There may be some science to glean from this: the direction and strength of the wind, information on how durable the parachute is, etc. These could be useful in planning future missions.

NASA Mars HiRise Image: MRO Captures Dark Sand Cascades

They might look like trees on Mars, but they're not.

Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost.

The above image was taken near the North Pole of Mars.

At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice.

When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks -- streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows.

Objects about 25 centimeters across are resolved on this image spanning about one kilometer.

Close ups of some parts of this image show billowing plumes indicating that the sand slides were occurring even when the image was being taken.

NASA Mars HiRISE Image: Starburst Spider Terrain

Credit: NASA Mars HiRISE

Mars’ seasonal cap of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) has eroded many beautiful terrains as it sublimates (goes directly from ice to vapor) every spring.

In this region we see troughs that form a starburst pattern.

In other areas these radial troughs have been referred to as “spiders,” simply because of their shape.

In this region the pattern looks more dendritic as channels branch out numerous times as they get further from the center.

The troughs are believed to be formed by gas flowing beneath the seasonal ice to openings where the gas escapes, carrying along dust from the surface below.

The dust falls to the surface of the ice in fan-shaped deposits.

You can find more images here

NASA Mars Curiosity: A desolate vision of the future of Mars exploration

In the wake of Curiosity's landing on Mars, artist Kelly Richardson's depictions of a post-apocalyptic Red Planet are a call for us to save our own planet

IT'S 200 years from now, and the sun beats down on a barren landscape of red rock scattered with smashed satellites and dilapidated robots.

NASA's battered old Curiosity rover lies wedged on a mound of dirt, its wheels whirring intermittently in futile effort, like an exhausted beetle stuck on its back.

This bleak Mars-scape is the work of Canadian artist Kelly Richardson. Mariner 9, a 12-metre long, hyper-realistic video installation, named after a NASA orbiter, offers a glimpse at a possible reality for the future of humanity on other planets.

Richardson worked closely with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment at the University of Arizona in Tucson and NASA to make sure elements such as the spacecraft that already exist and the composition of the rocks were accurate and realistic.

Facts couldn't fill in all the details though, and that is where Richardson's imagination took over. "Because it's a futurescape, of course I had to imagine what craft we might produce from this point," she says.

The result is a breathtaking yet peaceful panorama. At first glance, the footage could be mistaken for a photograph.

Movements in the scene are subtle and hypnotic - a gust of sand blows, the shadows shift and the robots whirr. An eerie soundscape accompanies it all.

Alongside the degeneration is construction. Pipes protrude from the ground - although it is open to speculation who or what built them.

That kind of ambiguity is important to Richardson. Take the two pulsing beacons in the middle distance, reminiscent of a landing strip.

"Maybe they're calling to other spacecraft that are on their way, or perhaps they had functioned that way before, or they could be sending data back to whomever, possibly no one," she says.

The idea that there may be nobody home to pick up these signals resonates with Richardson's other works, which often depict post-apocalyptic scenes of Earth's future.

Mariner 9 is suffused with the same concerns for the environment and humanity. "I don't want to depress people, but at the same time it would be great if we all woke up and decided to take charge of the situation," she says.

If we don't, Curiosity's successful landing on Mars could be one more fateful step towards realising this prophecy.

NASA MARS HiRISE Image: Oblique View of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

This image was acquired 24 hours after MSL landed to locate the hardware on the surface.

The colour strip didn't cover the hardware, but does provide a spectacular oblique view of the central mound or "Mount Sharp" (Aeolis Mons).

The viewing angle is 45 degrees, like looking out an airplane window. The subimage has been rotated 90 degrees to provide this perspective.

NASA HiRise Image: Older sibling sees Curiosity take the plunge

(Images: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Thousands of humans weren't the only ones with eyes trained on NASA's newest Mars rover last night: One of the robot's orbiting relatives captured this lucky shot as Curiosity descended onto the Red Planet.

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was in position to observe Curiosity as it plunged through the Martian atmosphere during its harrowing Entry, Descent and Landing phase, also called the "7 minutes of terror".

Seen about a minute before touchdown, Curiosity is still tucked into its backshell, part of the larger spacecraft that encased the rover during its roughly eight-month trek from Earth to Mars.

The craft is attached to its 16-metre-wide supersonic parachute, which slowed Curiosity's descent speed from 400 metres per second to 80 metres per second in less than two minutes.

A closer cutout view of the spacecraft and its chute (above left) was processed to avoid saturation, presenting better detail.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Curiosity let go of the backshell and fired up its retrorockets, beginning a powered descent that would end in the innovative but risky Sky Crane manoevre, with the rover being lowered on cables to land wheels first near a Martian mountain.

This isn't the first time HiRISE has watched over a new arrival on Mars. In May 2008 the orbiting camera spied NASA's Phoenix lander parachuting toward the Red Planet's north polar region.

The angle of that shot made it seem as if Phoenix was headed into a large crater, although it actually touched down on smooth plains about 20 kilometres from the crater rim.

HiRISE has also taken portraits of its predecessors, including the defunct rover Spirit and its still-operational twin, Opportunity.

"Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars," HiRISE team member Sarah Milkovich, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a NASA statement.

Still, getting a bead on Curiosity during its descent was not guaranteed. The HiRISE team had just one chance to get an image as Curiosity passed through the orbiter's field of view.

"If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape," says Milkovich.

NASA MARS HiRise Image: A Hole In Mars' Surface

What created this unusual hole in Mars?

The hole was discovered by chance on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars.

 The hole appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right.

Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep.

Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern.

Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life.

These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.

NASA MARS HiRISE Image: Polar Cliffs and Falling Blocks

There is an ice sheet at the North Pole of Mars that is a few miles thick at its center.

At some places, as in this image, it ends in steep cliffs that can be about 800 meters (2,600 feet) high.

The slopes of these cliffs are almost vertical which causes slab-like blocks of ice to break off and crash down to the surrounding plains.

Dense networks of cracks cover these icy cliff faces making it easier for these blocks to break free.

We've seen new debris at the base of many of these cliffs appearing between successive HiRISE images, so we regularly monitor sites like this to check for new blocks that have fallen.

Understanding how these cliffs are formed helps us understand the climatic record stored in the ice sheet itself.

Have any new blockfalls occurred here? Try and compare this image with ESP_018959_2635 (taken almost exactly one Martian year ago) and check for yourself!

NASA MARS HiRISE: Which Crater Came First?

This image shows two craters, both approximately the same diameter (not quite 3 kilometers, or about 1.8 miles), but quite different in appearance otherwise.

The slightly smaller crater to the south seems to have a sharper rim and steeper sides than its partner to the north, which also appears to contain more small craters inside it and along its rim.

The interior of the northern crater, in particular its south-facing wall, appears to have a similar texture to the ejecta around the southern crater.

This is the second image in a stereo pair (the first is ESP_019346_1690), so we have an anaglyph of these craters.

Although it would require a digital terrain model and more analysis to be certain, in the anaglyph it appears that the southern crater has a higher rim and a deeper center than the northern crater.

All these signs point to the northern crater being quite a bit older than the southern crater, rather than the two craters forming in the same impact event. For an example of two craters that might have formed at the same time (see ESP_020894_1395).

Compare the similarity of those two craters with the disparate appearance of the ones in this image.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_019346_1690.

NASA Mars HiRISE Image: Late Springtime Defrosting of Northern Dunes

This observation shows dunes in the Martian north polar sand sea (commonly referred to as the "north polar erg") in the process of defrosting.

Every winter, dunes and other surfaces at these northern latitudes are coated with several tens of centimeters of carbon dioxide frost and ice, plus a minor amount of water frost.

Details of this process are particularly visible this subimage. The white material is fine grained frost.

The dark, splotchy tones on the dunes may be deposits of particulates deposited from carbon dioxide "geysers" or relatively thick deposits of carbon dioxide ice. The more brownish colors represent defrosted areas. Polygonal patterns on the surface of the dunes are probably cracks in overlying carbon dioxide ice.

Landslides on the dunes' lee slopes are apparent,with a morphology consistent with fluidization from carbon dioxide frost. This and other areas of the north polar region are being investigated by HiRISE to compare to changes in past years.

Read more about Mars Seasonal changes

NASA MARS HiRISE: Elephants and Floods of Lava

This Mars HiRise observation highlights terrain that looks like an elephant.

This is a good example of the phenomena "pareidolia," where we see things (such as animals) that aren't really there.

Actually, this image covers the margin of a lava flow in Elysium Planitia, the youngest flood-lava province on Mars.

Flood lavas cover extensive areas, and were once thought to be emplaced extremely rapidly, like a flood of water.

Most lava floods on Earth are emplaced over years to decades, and this is probably true for much of the lava on Mars as well. An elephant can walk away from the slowly advancing flow front.

However, there is also evidence for much more rapidly flowing lava on Mars, a true flood of lava. In this instance, maybe this elephant couldn't run away fast enough.

Note: the sub-image is not map-projected, so approximate North is down.

NASA HiRISE Image: A Wild Assortment of Jumbled Rocks

This image covers a region of Mars near Nili Fossae that contains some of the best exposures of ancient bedrock on Mars.

The enhanced-colour subimage shows part of the ejecta from an impact crater.

The impact broke up already diverse rocks types and mixed them together to create this wild jumble of colours, each representing a different type of rock.

NASA MARS HiRISE website

You can also visit the NASA MARS HiRise 3D site Anaglyph

MARS HiRISE Image: Mineral Veins

The bright linear features cutting the bedrock in the center region of this image look like mineral veins.

Mineral veins are sheetlike bodies of minerals formed by water that flows through fractures.

The setting of this image is the central uplift of a large (approximately 50-kilometer diameter) impact crater, where deep, ancient bedrock was uplifted about 5 kilometers and fractured.

Heat from the impact melted ice in the Martian crust, creating a hydrothermal system. This could have been a habitable environment.

A small mineral vein was recently discovered by the Opportunity rover at Endeavour Crater.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_025766_2005.

HiRise Images: Mars rocks indicate relatively recent quakes, volcanism

Images of a martian landscape offer evidence that the Red Planet’s surface not only can shake like the surface of Earth, but has done so relatively recently.

If Marsquakes do indeed take place, said the scientists who analyzed the high-resolution images, our nearest planetary neighbor may still have active volcanism, which could help create conditions for liquid water.

With High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) imagery, the research team  examined boulders along a fault system known as Cerberus Fossae, which cuts across a very young (few million years old) lava surface on Mars.

By analyzing boulders that toppled from a martian cliff, some of which left trails in the coarse-grained soils, and comparing the patterns of dislodged rocks to such patterns caused by quakes on Earth, the scientists determined the rocks fell because of seismic activity.

The martian patterns were not consistent with how boulders would scatter if they were deposited as ice melted, another means by which rocks are dispersed on Mars.

Gerald Roberts, an earthquake geologist with Birkbeck, an institution of the University of London, who led the study, said that the images of Mars included boulders that ranged from two to 20 meters (6.5 to 65 feet) in diameter, which had fallen in avalanches from cliffs.

The size and number of boulders decreased over a radius of 100 kilometers (62 miles) centered at a point along the Cerberus Fossae faults.


“This is consistent with the hypothesis that boulders had been mobilized by ground-shaking, and that the severity of the ground-shaking decreased away from the epicenters of marsquakes,” Roberts said.

The study, by Roberts and his colleagues, will be published Thursday in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

NASA Mars Spirit Lander and Bonneville Crater in Colour

Near the lower left corner of this view is the three-petal lander platform that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit drove off in January 2004.

The lander is still bright, but with a reddish colour, probably due to accumulation of Martian dust.

› See labeled version

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this view on Jan. 29, 2012, providing the first image from orbit to show Spirit's lander platform in colour.

The view covers an area about 2,000 feet (about 600 meters) wide, dominated by Bonneveille Crater. North is up. A bright spot on the northern edge of Bonneville Crater is a remnant of Spirit's heat shield.

Spirit spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles east of its landing site.

An image of the lander platform taken by Spirit's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) after the rover had driven off is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05117.

The bright heat shield remnant can be seen in a panorama the same camera took of Bonneville Crater, at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA05591.jpg .

This image is one product from HiRISE observation ESP_025815_1655. Other products from the same observation can be found at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_025815_1655 .

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

MARS HiRISE: Landscape Evolution

A review of existing images of Mars reveals a diverse landscape.

In some instances, such as around volcanoes and in valleys, a casual glance suggests the features are much like those here on Earth.

Closer inspection, however, often confirms differences in scale and or subtle characteristics relative to their more familiar terrestrial counterparts.

These same images also reveal a Mars that is often very different form the Earth. Some locations are marked by huge jumbles of blocks forming chaotic terrain, whereas others are buried beneath blankets of dust. Bizarre “thumbprint,” “Swiss cheese,” and other surface textures also occur.

Current limits on the resolution of Mars images often preclude distinguishing the of processes responsible for shaping a landscape.

The geomorphic thresholds that influence the efficiency and intensity of surface modification by different processes can often be hard to define. Indeed, different processes can sometimes produce very similar appearing landforms.

Detecting the subtle, diagnostic signatures of past water erosion versus wind or other processes often requires the high resolution imagery that will be obtained by HiRISE.

It is the analysis of HiRISE images that may provide some of the clues for a better understanding of the evolving Martian landscape.

See more of the Feb 1st HiRise Images

NASA MARS HiRISE: Search for Beagle 2 Lander

This is the twelfth image from HiRISE in the part of Isidis basin where the British Beagle 2 spacecraft was supposed to land around Christmas time of 2003.

All contact was lost after its separation from the Mars Express spacecraft six days before atmospheric entry.

The lack of telemetry on its way to the surface means there is little information about where the spacecraft may have landed on the surface--we can only search in the region where it was expected to land if the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence had been nominal.

EDL was probably not nominal, but perhaps the spacecraft did land correctly and failure occurred for some other reason.

Nothing resembling the Beagle lander has been seen in any of the HiRISE images, although we aren't sure that they've been thoroughly searched. For an idea of what the Beagle 2 hardware might look like, see this web page.

The easiest thing to spot would be the bright parachute, if it actually deployed. The parachutes are still easy to spot at the MER and Pathfinder landing sites, so dust deposition over the past eight years probably would not disguise the bright feature over equatorial regions of Mars.

At high latitudes the brightness patterns are reset each winter by the seasonal deposits of carbon-dioxide and dust, as seen at the Phoenix landing site. However, beware of bright cosmic-ray hits.

EDL on Mars is difficult! Only the United States has succeeded, with Viking 1, Viking 2, Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, and Phoenix.

The 1999 Mars Polar lander was a failure, as was Beagle 2 and six landing attempts by the former Soviet Union.

One of the Soviet landers, Mars 3, made it to the surface and transmitted some data or noise for 20 seconds before failure. We haven't been able to locate any of the Soviet lander hardware from HiRISE images.

Searching for this hardware is like looking for a needle in a really big haystack, and we don't know what the needle looks like.

In August 2012 NASA will attempt to land the biggest rover ever sent to Mars, MSL or Curiosity. HiRISE will attempt to image MSL during descent, as it did for Phoenix, and after what is hopefully a successful landing.

Written by: Alfred McEwen (11 January 2012)

MARS HiRISE: The most powerful camera sent to space

The University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is an incredible piece of scientific equipment. Currently circling the Red Planet aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the instrument is capable of capturing photographs of the Martian surface at unprecedented resolution, averaging about 25 centimeters per pixel.

In the five and a half years that it's been snapping photos, HiRISE has capture close to 22,000 images of Mars' surface.

In doing so, it has provided a tremendous service to researchers throughout the scientific community, but equally impressive is the progress that HiRISE has made in the realm of public outreach, bringing stunning, high-quality imagery of the Martian surface to the general public on an international level.

Visit the MARS HiRise Image site

HiRISE: Gullies and Lobate Material in a Crater in the Nereidum Montes

This image includes a crater that has been heavily influenced by later geologic processes.

First of all, terrain-altering or -burying processes have eliminated much of the pattern of ejecta that surrounds fresh craters.

The crater also appears fairly flat-floored with short walls (not very deep) for its size, indicating material has filled it in.

These modifying effects may be due to deposition and activity of ice-rich or other mantling sediments deposited at some point in the past.

Finally, the crater clearly exhibits gullies starting on its northern wall and extending to its center.

The arc-shaped ridge inside the southern edge of the crater, partially buried by the filling material, is particularly curious - it could be a wind-caused or other accumulation of crater-fill material.

One of the rationales for acquiring an image of this location is to investigate the relationship between these features; HiRISE's full resolution can provide better details of the terrain.

HiRISE | Sulphates in Ius Chasma

HiRISE | Sulphates in Ius Chasma