Amazing Photos at the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Celebration Space

Mars is a dry desert world, covered with reddish sand. During our lifetimes, spaceships have revealed its incredible landscapes and spectacular landscapes. It’s a world reminiscent of Earth, but at the same time alien and strange. This week, to celebrate the launch of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 15 years ago, NASA shared some of the most breathtaking images of the orbiter. We found these images to be very beautiful and believe you will too, whether you are a Mars aficionado or a beginner.

The Mars Reconnaussance Orbiter (MRO) has three cameras: the Mars Color Imager (MARCI), which has a fisheye lens for a daily global view of the planet; the Context Camera (CTX), which provides black-and-white shots of 19-mile-wide (30-kilometer wide) terrain; and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which produces the beautiful and breathtaking images for which MRO has become famous. HiRISE takes the highest resolution orbital images of the Martian surface ever, and in color. They show sand dunes, avalanches, craters, dust devils, ancient river and lake beds, mountains, ravines and more in exquisite detail. MRO was even able to photograph rovers such as Curiosity and Opportunity, on the planet far below. He also photographed the two small Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos.

The image atop the sand dune and ripples in Proctor Crater is color enhanced to bring out the details. Like other images of still active sand dunes, this shows that Mars is not a completely inactive and still world. Leslie Tamppari, assistant scientist for the MRO project at JPL, said in a statement:

The more we look, the more we discover. Before MRO, we didn’t really know what had really changed on Mars. We thought the atmosphere was so thin that there was almost no sand movement and most dune movement was in the ancient past.

In the image above, we see dark streaks, called recurrent slope lines (RSL), on a steep crater wall at Valles Marineris. There is still a lot of debate about whether these are small streams of brackish liquid water.

MRO has also observed dust storms on Mars, as seen in the image below. Most storms are quite small and regional, but others can expand to encompass the entire planet, about once or twice a decade. They are called “dust events surrounding the planet”. MARCI took the images in the summer of 2018. It was the storm that darkened the sky over the Opportunity rover and caused it to fail electricity thanks to its solar panels.

In the May view we see the sinkholes of Valles Marineris (left), Meridiani Planum (center), an autumn dust storm in Acidalia Planitia (top) and the southern polar cap in early spring (in low). The same regions are in sight from July, but completely obscured by dust.

Dust storms aren’t the only dusty phenomenon MRO has seen. The following image below is a good example of a snake-like dust devil, captured on February 16, 2012. The image was taken in late spring afternoon in the Amazonis Planitia region. north of Mars.

The plume is about 30 meters in diameter and, depending on the length of the shadow, is over half a mile (800 meters) high!

A westerly breeze created the S-shaped arc in the plume. Just like on Earth, Martian winds draw their energy from the sun, even though Mars is much further from the sun than Earth. Even though the winds have abated this time of year, they are still strong enough to produce dust devils like this.

Dust demons were also seen up close on the ground by rovers Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity.

Dust storms and dust demons aren’t the only way Mars is still active. Avalanches are another common occurrence, especially when seasonal ice vaporizes in the warmer spring.

In the image below, taken on May 29, 2019, the MRO captured avalanches on cliffs 1,640 feet high (500 meters high) at the north pole of Mars. Avalanches have also had the effect of exposing hidden layers of ice and dust in the cliffs, dating back millions of years or more. To scientists, these layers are like reading the Mars history book, providing clues to how the environment has changed in the region over time.

Another thing MRO is good at is finding new craters. These “fresh” craters can be identified by the new ejecta blanket of rock debris surrounding them. Many more can be seen on Mars due to the planet’s very small atmosphere, which does not burn larger meteors as easily as Earth’s atmosphere. More of them therefore have a real impact on the planet.

MRO has found over 800 new impact craters so far during its mission. The one pictured below is approximately 30 meters in diameter. The impact was strong enough to send ejections up to 15 km.

On Mars, craters also last much longer than on Earth, again because of the thin atmosphere that erodes them more slowly.

MRO has been in orbit around Mars since 2006 and has taken no less than 6,882,204 images, generating 194 terabytes of data. These views of the Red Planet have helped revolutionize our knowledge of this familiar but alien world.

MRO also took images of mud volcanoes, and a recent study showed that the mud flowing from them will flow in a manner similar to lava on Earth.

In addition to taking incredible images, MRO also studies Mars with several other instruments. It measures the temperature of the atmosphere and dust and water vapor using the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), peers below the surface with a radar using Shallow Radar (SHARAD) and analyzes different minerals at the surface in rocks and sand with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISME).

The images returned by MRO were some of the most incredible of any planetary mission and are the perfect way to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch. With all the other data to date, it has forever changed our view and understanding of the Red Planet.

More information on the MRO is available on the mission’s website. Check out the HiRISE website for several thousand more images! You can even ask the spaceship to take pictures of specific targets.

Conclusion: NASA released amazing photos of Mars to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the launch of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Via Jet Propulsion Laboratory