Justin DuJardin |O_o| |x_X| |-_-| |o_O|

Holy Mars Orbiter, Batman!

In August  of 2005 NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,  In March of 2006 it arrived at Mars and began to study the terrain and atmosphere in great detail.  Over the last 4 years the MRO has gathered more data on Mars than the sum of all other missions to Mars combined[2].

Today let’s take a look at some of the amazing pictures it has returned.  All of the amazing detail of the images you see on this page are provided by HiRISE which is one of 6 instruments carried on-board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter…

Barchan Dunes in Chasma Boreale

High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (link)

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona Tucson and has the most powerful telescopic camera ever flown to another planet at its disposal.  As of October 8th, 2009 the HiRISE project has released into the public domain almost 1.2million images, totaling just under 38Terabytes of data[3].

Sand Dunes