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Color View from Orbit Shows Mars Rover Beside Crater

By Guest PostMarch 11, 2011Scienceball aerospace, color image, crater, denver, high resolution imaging science experiment, hirise, lockheed martin space systems, mars exploration rover opportunity, mars reconnaissance orbiter, NASA, opportunity, orbiting camera, robotic arm, ruiz garcia, santa maria, university of arizona

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has nearly completed its three-month examination of a crater informally named “Santa Maria,” but before the rover resumes its overland trek, an orbiting camera has provided a color image of Opportunity beside Santa Maria.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired the image on March 1, while Opportunity was extending its robotic arm to take close-up photos of a rock called “Ruiz Garcia.” From orbit, the tracks Opportunity made as it approached the crater from the west are clearly visible. Santa Maria crater is about 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. (more…)

NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet

By Guest PostFebruary 17, 2011Science2005 deep impact mission, b 17 bomber, coma, comet, comet atmosphere, comet tempel 1, crater, denver, don brownlee, images, joe veverka, jpl, lockheed martin space systems, mission operations, NASA, new terrain, nucleus, pete schultz, stardust, stardust next, stardust spacecraft, tim larson, valentine day

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.

The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet’s atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT, having completed its prime mission collecting cometary particles and returning them to Earth in 2006. (more…)

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft

By Guest PostJanuary 23, 2011Scienceairborne telescopes, atmosphere, crater, earth, ed stone, icy rings, magnetic north, Miranda, mysterious seventh planet, NASA, neptune, saturn, south poles, Space, stars, suzanne dodd, uranian equator, uranus, voyager 2 spacecraft, voyager spacecraft

As NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made the only close approach to date of our mysterious seventh planet Uranus 25 years ago, Project Scientist Ed Stone and the Voyager team gathered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to pore over the data coming in.

Images of the small, icy Uranus moon Miranda were particularly surprising. Since small moons tend to cool and freeze over rapidly after their formation, scientists had expected a boring, ancient surface, pockmarked by crater-upon-weathered-crater. Instead they saw grooved terrain with linear valleys and ridges cutting through the older terrain and sometimes coming together in chevron shapes. They also saw dramatic fault scarps, or cliffs. All of this indicated that periods of tectonic and thermal activity had rocked Miranda’s surface in the past. (more…)

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Color View from Orbit Shows Mars Rover Beside Crater

NASA Releases Images of Man-Made Crater on Comet

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft