Category Archives: Reports

ExoMars 2020: FiT for Mars

Rovers are versatile explorers on the surface of other planets, but they do need some training before setting off. A model of Rosalind Franklin rover that will be sent to Mars in 2021 is scouting the Atacama Desert, in Chile, … Continue reading

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HiRISE: At the summit of Jovis Tholus

At the summit of Jovis Tholus. Jovis Tholus is a volcano in the Tharsis region and is about 58 kilometers in diameter. Our image only shows a portion of the summit. HiRISE Picture of the Day archive [More at links]

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Field test: Robotic rover collects subsurface samples with patchy, specialized microbial life

[Editor’s note: From a paper by Kimberley Warren-Rhodes and eight co-authors recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology.] Subsurface Microbial Habitats in an Extreme Desert Mars-Analog Environment Sediments in the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert are a terrestrial analog to … Continue reading

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MARCI weather report, February 18-24, 2019

For the past week on Mars, dust storms and water ice clouds continued to crop up along the edge of the seasonal north polar ice cap. The plains of Amazonis, Chryse, and Utopia also experienced some local-scale dust lifting as … Continue reading

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THEMIS: Protonilus Mensae in false color

THEMIS Image of the Day, February 28, 2019. The hills in this false-color VIS image are part of Protonilus Mensae. These hills, located between the relative highlands of Terra Sabaea and the lowlands of Vastitas Borealis, most likely formed by … Continue reading

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HiRISE: Blink and you’ll miss them

Blink and you’ll miss them. The dust devil tracks in this image have faded considerably since an earlier image, something we wanted to measure. If you look to the lower left and center, you can still see some of them. … Continue reading

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THEMIS: Arabia Terra crater dunes

THEMIS Image of the Day, February 27, 2019. This VIS image shows the floor of an unnamed crater in Arabia Terra. The peaks in the center of the crater floor were formed by the rebound of melted rock at the … Continue reading

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HiRISE: Diverse lithologies of the Fourth Planet

Diverse lithologies of the Fourth Planet. This nice image is located in Syrtis Major, right next to Isidis Planitia and south of the Nili Fossae formations. On Mars. HiRISE Picture of the Day archive [More at links]

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THEMIS: Chryse Planitia in false color

THEMIS Image of the Day, February 26, 2019. The brighter region at the bottom of this VIS image is the relative highlands of Arabia Terra, while the rest of the image shows Chryse Plainitia. The boundary between the two regions … Continue reading

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Latest weather at Gale Crater and Elysium Planitia

Daily Elysium charts and data (temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure) here.

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