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The slight asymmetry in the sand dunes shows their steep sides are orientated towards the south. The University of Arizona, which operates the High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRise) camera used to take the image, pointed out in a statement(opens in new tab) that this indicates sands are blown southwards, though the Martian winds may be variable. The image was taken on November 22, 2022, at a latitude of 42.505 degrees and a longitude of 67.076 degrees. It comes as part of a series of pictures taken by the HiRise camera that orbits Mars on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft. The...

The dust is finally beginning to clear on Mars, but it'll probably still be a while before NASA's sidelined Opportunity rover can phone home. A global dust storm has enshrouded Mars for more than a month, plunging the planet's surface into perpetual darkness. That's complicated life significantly for the solar-powered Opportunity, which has apparently put itself into a sort of hibernation; the rover hasn't contacted its controllers since June 10. Scientists studying the storm "say that, as of Monday, July 23, more dust is falling out than is being raised into the planet's thin air," agency officials added. "That means...

The Martian dust storm was first spotted from space by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA officials said. "As soon as the orbiter team saw how close the storm was to Opportunity, they notified the rover's team to begin preparing contingency plans," NASA officials said in a statement. "In a matter of days, the storm had ballooned." As of Friday (June 8), the storm covers more than 7 million square miles of Mars (18 million square kilometers), according to NASA. That's an area larger than all of North America on Earth. "Full dust storms like this one are not surprising, but...

"In releasing a new set of four captioned images today from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the captions from each also included this paragraph: 'HiRISE has not been allowed to acquire off-nadir [straight down] targeted observations for a couple of months due to MRO spacecraft issues, so many high-priority science objectives are on hold.' The image restrictions are probably related to either or both the battery and reaction wheel issues noted in recent status reports.

Explanation: This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits...

Canada has given oil sands a dirty reputation, but a breakthrough, commercially viable technology has caught the eye of a former Exxon Mobil president who is putting it to use to clean up Utah’s billions of barrels of oil sands. Imagine extracting high-quality oil out of the estimated 32 billion barrels buried in Utah’s oil sands, without creating the toxic wastelands that have resulted from oil sands projects in Western Canada. And imagine doing it at a cost that can still turn a profit in today’s oil price slump. That would be highly enticing to some of the large operators...

Explanation: It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust...

Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past. Surveying intact bedrock layers with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, scientists found carbonate minerals, indicating that Mars had neutral to alkaline water when the minerals formed at these locations more than 3.6 billion years ago. Carbonates, which on Earth include limestone and chalk, dissolve quickly in acid. Therefore, their survival until today on Mars challenges suggestions that an exclusively acidic environment later dominated the planet....

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.

The Mars Phoenix Lander parachutes down to Mars on Sunday, in this image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona ) The first images from the Phoenix Mars Lander have confirmed that the solar panels needed for its energy supply unfolded as planned and that masts for its camera and weather station are in position. A successful touchdown late Sunday was followed by the first pictures about two hours later. More images are expected Monday evening. This is one of the first images captured by the Phoenix lander, showing the vast plains of the northern polar region of...

WASHINGTON - An orbiting spacecraft has sent back new evidence for the presence of water on Mars. Scientists long have debated whether water flowed on the red planet, with evidence increasing in recent years. The presence of water would raise the possibility of at least primitive life forms existing there. Images from a camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show alternating layers of dark- and light-toned rock in a giant rift valley. Within those deposits are a series of linear fractures, called joints, that are surrounded by "halos" of light-toned bedrock, according to researchers from the University of Arizona. Their...

The HiRISE Operations Center (HiROC) at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is responsible for the majority of the ground data system work for the HiRISE instrument. Observation planning, uplink, downlink, data processing, and instrument monitoring are all performed at HiROC. The HiRISE camera is one of six instruments on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which successfully went into orbit around Mars on March 10, 2006.

Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars 12:29 05 December 2006 NewScientist.com news service David Chandler The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spots Spirit's backshell and parachute (Image: NASA) After three decades lost on the Red Planet, Viking 2's backshell is spotted from space (Image: NASA) It is a feat millions of times more impressive than finding a needle in a haystack. The new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted about a dozen spacecraft on the Martian surface and, incredibly, taken pictures of such sharpness that scientists have been able to identify individual rocks that were first photographed by the Viking landers in...

PASADENA, Calif (Reuters) - A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars is using the most powerful cameras ever pointed at the Red Planet to study its climate cycles and whether there is enough water to support a manned mission, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Monday. Images taken during a test of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's instruments showed clay-rich areas that could have supported life and frost, and layered deposits of ice and dirt at the polar ice cap indicate "dynamic climate changes" as recently as 100,000 years ago, scientist Scott Murchie told reporters. "We are seeing a new Mars,"...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA scientists unveiled unprecedented close-up images of a massive crater on Mars they said could open the book on the Red Planet, from its formation to its history with water, the basis of life on Earth. The images were taken three days ago by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which arrived in its permanent Martian orbit this week after an August 2005 launch and just turned its cameras on, and by a robotic rover on the planet's surface. The MRO is providing support for the rover Opportunity, which began its first week at the enormous crater, exploring...

Photo shows the area in which Opportunity landed, the track outlined path it took over two years to negotiate 6 miles of desert to Victoria Crater Victoria Crater. The Mars-orbiting NASA satellite took a picture as it passed Victoria Crater and actually captured the Rover sitting on the edge of the crater.........A blow-up of the satellite photo showing Opportunity sitting on the crater's rim False color looking North to Cape Verde; great rock layers to explore. Looking Southeast across Duck Bay.

Mars is ready for its close-up. The highest-resolution camera ever to orbit Mars is returning low-altitude images to Earth from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Rocks and surface features as small as armchairs are revealed in the first image from MRO since the spacecraft maneuvered into its final, low-altitude orbital path. The imaging of the red planet at this resolution heralds a new era in Mars exploration. The image of a small fraction of Mars' biggest canyon reached Earth on Friday, the beginning of a week of tests for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment and other instruments on NASA's Mars...

PASADENA, Calif. - The most powerful spacecraft ever sent to Mars has settled into a nearly circular orbit, a move that allows scientists to begin studying the planet in unprecedented detail, NASA said Tuesday. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its thrusters for 12 minutes Monday to adjust to its final position six months after it arrived at the planet. Its altitude ranges between 155 to 196 miles above the surface. "Getting to this point is a great achievement," said Dan Johnston, deputy mission manager at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $720 million mission. Over the next...

LOS ANGELES - Scientists have processed more than a dozen new photos taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet last month, including its first color image. The crisp test images released Friday revealed pocked craters, carved gullies and wind-formed dunes in Mars' southern hemisphere. The diverse geologic features show the importance of water, wind and meteor impacts in shaping the Martian surface, scientists said. The orbiter, the most advanced spacecraft ever sent to another planet, reached Mars on March 10 and slipped into an elliptical orbit. Over the next six months, it will dip into...

LOS ANGELES - A high-resolution camera aboard NASA's latest spacecraft to reach Mars sent back its first view of the Red Planet from orbit, the space agency said Friday. The crisp test image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was taken late Thursday at an altitude of 1,547 miles and shows a 30.9-mile-by-11.7-mile area of the planet's mid-latitude southern highlands. The mosaic of 10 side-by-side exposures shows a cratered surface with ravine- or canyon-like channels on both sides. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the smallest discernible objects are about 25 feet across, but that the camera will be able to capture...