Sightseeing on Mars
Those who visit this website regularly know that I repeatedly post images from the various Mars orbiters and rovers. I do this not only because the images have scientific interest or that they are cool, but because it is simply fun to sightsee, even if it is done by proxy using a robot many millions of miles away. Here are two more images of the sights of Mars.
The first is a mosiac image of a small crater that the rover Opportunity strolled past on November 9 in its four year journey to Endeavour Crater.
What always amazes me about the images that Opportunity has taken as it travels across the Martian desert is how totally lifeless this desert is. You would be very hard-pressed to find any desert on Earth like this. On Earth, life is everywhere, even in deserts with their harsh environment. Moreover, life on Earth has reshaped the surface drastically. Environmentalists like to whine about the havoc humans wreck on nature, but the truth is that all life does this continually. Plants and trees help soften the terrain. Animals (not just humans) mold the surface to their needs.
On Mars, however, all one sees is wind-strewn sand across barren bedrock. What this suggests is that, if there is life on Mars, it is well buried, not very visible, and possibly quite rare. It will thus be difficult to spot.
The second image is another one of those Martian collapse features, where some form of fluid flow under the surface washed out the supporting material. causing the surface to eventually collapse. In this case, however, the collapse left at least one natural bridge. Based on the scale (25 cm = 1 pixel), this bridge is about 80 feet wide and 100 feet long. (To calculate its height requires more mathematical skills than I have.)
Boy, wouldn’t this be a magnificent thing to hike under and across!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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