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HiRISE and Iceland

The University of Arizona has posted an interesting new batch of images from HiRISE, taken between July 8-31 this year. Wired, in its writeup on the Mars image collection, includes a sample image that looks sorta…familiar…

These volcanic cones were formed by hot lava running over water or ice. The heat from the […]

Rover’s-Eye View

A slightly-marsified version of one of my Iceland pics, from the wastelands near Emstrur.

It was easy to see why NASA sent Apollo astronauts to train here.

Back Soon From Mars

I really, really should have visited Iceland before we started writing a novel set on Mars. If Texas is like a whole other country, Iceland is like a whole other not-quite-fully-terraformed planet.

Finally back in Reykjavik after a week’s trek through the hinterlands north of Eyjafjallajokull and two weeks of camping throughout the rest […]

James Cameron’s 3D Mars Camera

If James Cameron is so passionate about restoring the 3D camera to MSL/Curiosity, then…instead of lobbying, and urging, and taking his concerns to the NASA administrator, why didn’t he just pay for it out of pocket?

I don’t know that he didn’t, or didn’t offer to do so (the article doesn’t say), but it seems […]

NASA Gives Opportunity Free Will

Okay, not really. But they are giving it the ability to autonomously select science targets based on general guidelines:

The new system, which NASA uploaded over the past few months, is called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS and it lets Opportunity’s computer examine images that the rover takes with its wide-angle navigation […]

Goodbye to Chandrayaan

Looks like India’s Chandrayaan I lunar probe has died, after a pretty good run.

India’s space agency ended an $82 million mission to map the surface of the moon after failing to restore contact with its unmanned Chandrayaan I craft.

Contact was lost with the probe two days ago and scientists at the Indian Space […]

New Trove of Cassini Saturn Pictures

Eye candy. Or planet pr()n.

Life Imitates “Atlas Shrugged”

Uh-oh, it looks like Galt’s “ray screen” was no match for the “Don’t Be Evil” crowd — Google Earth has found Atlantis:

From what it sounds like, a British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 […]

Good News, Bad News

Good News: There may be lots and lots of earthlike planets in the galaxy.

Bad News: We have no way of getting to any of the others – which is a shame, as such planets would be very useful to those of us fed up with the way things are going on the only earthlike […]

Mars Needs Beano

More methane on Mars:

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “At […]

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