The mad mountains of Mars
Click for original image.
Click for interactive map
Cool image time! The picture above, cropped to post here, was taken on June 10, 2025 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, and shows some of the stranger terrain found higher up the flanks of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, where it is doing another drilling campaign into the first boxwork geology it has encountered. The white line marks its past travels, while the green dotted line its planned route.
The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the picture above. The wild mountain peaks on the horizon are part of the sulfate-bearing unit that appears very bright in the overview map. The material that makes up this terrain appears to be very easily eroded, based on its features as seen from orbit, as well as Curiosity’s distant view. Whether that erosion was wind, water, or ice, remains undetermined, and is the main question Curiosity will attempt to answer once it gets there, likely in a year or so.
Regardless, the landscape appears almost like it soft sand being washed away.
Where the rover will go next the science team has not yet decided. It will definitely continue uphill, but they do not yet know the route they will take through that sulfate-bearing unit.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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
Click for original image.
Click for interactive map
Cool image time! The picture above, cropped to post here, was taken on June 10, 2025 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity, and shows some of the stranger terrain found higher up the flanks of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, where it is doing another drilling campaign into the first boxwork geology it has encountered. The white line marks its past travels, while the green dotted line its planned route.
The yellow lines indicate the area seen in the picture above. The wild mountain peaks on the horizon are part of the sulfate-bearing unit that appears very bright in the overview map. The material that makes up this terrain appears to be very easily eroded, based on its features as seen from orbit, as well as Curiosity’s distant view. Whether that erosion was wind, water, or ice, remains undetermined, and is the main question Curiosity will attempt to answer once it gets there, likely in a year or so.
Regardless, the landscape appears almost like it soft sand being washed away.
Where the rover will go next the science team has not yet decided. It will definitely continue uphill, but they do not yet know the route they will take through that sulfate-bearing unit.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
Of interest perhaps
https://phys.org/news/2025-06-early-visions-mars-19th-century.html
Was that a deliberate reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s, “At the Mountains of Madness”?
Maybe you should try to get one of the peaks named “Cthulhu”.
Blackwing1: Heh. I ain’t sayin’.