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Mars NASA Earth Space Science Technology

NASA Publishes a Thousand Photos of Mars (engadget.com) 62

Posted by BeauHD from the new-wallpaper dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Engadget: NASA has released a huge number of high-resolution photos of Mars captured from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRise camera, which has been capturing images of the planet since 2005. The latest dump consists of over a thousand images that can familiarize you with the red planet's many craters, impact sites, dunes, mountains, ice caps and other features. You can view every single photo captured on HiRise's official website. Popular Science mentions that every 26 months or so, Mars and the sun are on the opposite sides of the Earth, allowing MRO to transmit a massive amount of photos from the planet's surface.
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NASA Publishes a Thousand Photos of Mars More

NASA Publishes a Thousand Photos of Mars

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  • I could spend hours staring at these images. Just in time too, I needed a new desktop background!

    I look forward to the day we go to Mars and meet up with the various probes and rovers we sent there.

  • Simple question (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How does this affect anyone? Nobody is going to visit these sand dunes and other topographical features anytime soon. We're not going to Mars for awhile and we're really not making much progress. Even so, it's a dead planet that's not capable of sustaining human life. How does this affect anyone at all? This doesn't affect me and it doesn't affect anyone I know. It's a complete waste of money, time, and effort. Can anyone explain why this matters? Now, I know you'll censor my post to -1 to avoid the questio

    • Knowledge is its own reason.
      Also, the pictures are really pretty.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        I could get you pretty pictures for vastly cheaper. ;)

        Seriously, though, while I think the exploration is great, the fact that NASA has morphed into the All-Mars Channel [scientificamerican.com] is kind of annoying for those of us who prefer other destinations in the solar system (for me, it's Venus and Titan with a little Enceladus, Europa and Io on the side)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Pretty much every space mission has been a great driver of technology. We invest in space because it returns science, but it also lets us invest big in technologies needed to obtain that science.

      You know how Formula 1 / Rally Driving has absolutely NO BEARING on your life? Apart from the airbags. And the automatic seat restraints. And the ABS. And disc brakes. And speed cameras (invented for race track timing). And gearing systems. And fuel efficiencies. And aerodynamics. And tyre design. And...

      Ba

    • How does this affect you (typical north-american way of think where he is the center of the universe)? Well, the explanation is long and I'm not willing to spend time writing it because you will surely ignore it or more likely will not understand it. I'll give you the short version is that "anything can be useful sooner or later" where the part of the "sooner or later" may vary from days to decades.

      And if you keep idle and thinking that you should only do things when you have total certainty that they wi

    • Re:Simple question (Score:4, Insightful)

      by luis_a_espinal ( 1810296 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @12:38PM (#52678609)

      How does this affect anyone? Nobody is going to visit these sand dunes and other topographical features anytime soon. We're not going to Mars for awhile and we're really not making much progress. Even so, it's a dead planet that's not capable of sustaining human life. How does this affect anyone at all? This doesn't affect me and it doesn't affect anyone I know. It's a complete waste of money, time, and effort. Can anyone explain why this matters? Now, I know you'll censor my post to -1 to avoid the question and pretend like it doesn't exist. But it's an important question: why does this matter at all? Can anyone explain how this affects me? I think not! But I expect to be censored to -1 almost instantly.

      Won't affect you for sure. How sad to live a life without a spark of curiosity.

  • Popular Science is a joke (Score:3)

    by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @02:08AM (#52676277)

    And doesn't know what they're talking about. As long as Mars isn't obscured by the Sun (which also happens every 26 months) the communications with the probes around Mars continues unhindered.

    • Does director of the Planetary Image Research Laboratory Alfred McEwen know what he's talking about? Because he's the one who actually said it.

    • this enables them to get higher bandwidth and the bandwidth is the main limiter of how many images they can transmit from mars, so for these few weeks they get higher bandwidth, which means more images during this time.

      how much higher, no idea.

      it never said that it was impossible at other times, just that this time every n months they can get "massively" more than normally.

      it is too bad the articles stick to terms like massive and hefty and not to actual numbers. the weight of my massive and hefty member mi

    • And doesn't know what they're talking about. As long as Mars isn't obscured by the Sun (which also happens every 26 months) the communications with the probes around Mars continues unhindered.

      Not to mention the phrase in the summary that's just stupid:

      allowing MRO to transmit a massive amount of photos from the planet's surface.

      What the hell do they think the 'O' stands for in MRO? If it's orbiting, it's not sending photos from the planet's surface, it's sending them from orbit. It should say "massive amount of photos of the planet's surface", but we can't actually expect the 'editors' around here to do any actual editing.

  • Ah yes, there I see him, on page 694, image 16.319, K'breel, walking somewhere.
  • not from the surface... this thing is in orbit...
  • Sprinkle system left on.
  • Too late, I mean yeah, these are great images and all but I saw "The Martian" (Ridley Scott) so I already know exactly what Mars looks like
  • Oh, I'm going to blow it up; it obstructs my view of Venus.
  • The pictures were allegedly retrieved due to an iCloud leak that allowed celebrities’ phones to be hacked.

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