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Looking back at Mariner images of Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/09/03 06:49 CDT | 8 comments
Bruce Murray was an early advocate for the inclusion of cameras on planetary spacecraft. As a tribute to him, I thought I'd take a look at a few of the images from the early Mariner missions to Mars.
Mars, Old and New: A Personal View by Bruce Murray
Posted by Jennifer Vaughn on 2013/09/03 06:07 CDT | 1 comments
An interview with Bruce Murray from 2001 about his perspectives on Mars science and exploration: past, present, and future.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/29 01:18 CDT | 4 comments
Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/03/11 10:53 CDT | 3 comments
Nearly four decades before Curiosity, we dug into Mars for the first time. The pictures are still amazing.
Blast from the past: Mariner 4's images of Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/12/10 09:15 CST | 5 comments
While hunting for photos to use in a presentation, I came across a couple of different amateur takes on the Mariner 4 photo catalog.
Visiting Viking at Seattle's Museum of Flight
Posted by Tom Dahl on 2012/11/14 03:03 CST
One of the nicest aerospace museums in the United States is the Museum of Flight, outside Seattle, Washington. I traveled cross-country in order to visit the "Flight Capsule 3" Viking lander, a backup unit that was never completed. Its partially built state exposes its internal structures, making it a boon to study.
Book Review: The International Atlas of Mars Exploration, by Phil Stooke
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/12 04:31 CDT | 3 comments
I've been waiting for the publication of this book for years. Phil Stooke's International Atlas of Mars Exploration, just published by Cambridge University Press, is an exhaustively awesome labor of love, chronicling the first five decades of Mars exploration in pictures, maps, and facts.
A couple of gems from the archives
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/09/10 11:07 CDT | 2 comments
We're still working on migrating content from the old to the new website. This week, that means I am looking, one by one, through some great amateur-processed space images.
A stunning view of Mars from Argyre to Thaumasia
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/18 06:33 CDT
Image magician Daniel Machacek has done it again, producing a jaw-dropping view of Mars from Viking Orbiter 1, featuring a frosty Argyre basin and stretching across to a series of faults called Thaumasia Fossae.
Discouraging the search for Mars Polar Lander
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/02/17 02:26 CST
I'm not encouraging people to search individual images for the Mars Polar Lander anymore, for three reasons.�
Mariner 9 approaching Mars: a movie!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/12/09 01:32 CST
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Mariner 9's November 13, 1971 arrival at Mars, Daniel Macháček has produced a morphed animation of the images that Mars' first orbiter took while approaching the planet.
Mars Exploration Family Portrait
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/11/23 12:26 CST | 1 comments
Jason Davis put together this neat summary of the checkered history of Mars exploration.
Weekend watching: 3D Movie from Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/09/09 07:07 CDT
Weekend watching: 3D Movie from Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/05/02 11:26 CDT
Space.com has taken advantage of the infinitely scrollable nature of Web pages to produce a really cool infographic on the scales of orbital distances in the solar system.
Pretty picture: Viking 1 across Mars
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/03/09 10:10 CST
Image magician Daniel Macháček has been turning his energies to Viking Orbiter views of Mars lately, with some stunning results, like the one below. I'm not sure how he makes images that look so sharp and clean and with such rich color out of the Viking Orbiter data.
Mapping Mars, now and in history
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2009/02/26 04:23 CST
Planetary cartographer Phil Stooke has been working on a cool project to compose and compare maps of Mars that show how we saw the planet throughout the Space Age.
Opportunity's got a long road ahead
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2008/09/19 05:03 CDT
Mars Exploration Rover principal investigator Steve Squyres announced on National Public Radio's Science Friday show the next goal for Opportunity, and it's a long, long, long way away: a huge crater about 12 kilometers southeast of its current location, which the team is referring to internally as "Endeavour."
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