Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Coal Black Smith

For any other Mars buffs in the audience:
Well, first of all, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has successfully entered Martian orbit, giving us not only a fantastic source of data about the Martian environment, but also a direct link for communicating with current and future landers.

Almost as exciting, from the perspective of the couch-explorer, Google has just released Google Mars. This is a fantastic tool for exploring the surface. After looking at some of these shots, the idea of Martian surface water becomes almost undeniable.
For the casual tourist, I recommend looking up the following features:
Hellas Basin (one of the largest meteor impact sites known)
The Valles
Marineris
and, of course, Olympus Mons.

To give a bit of scale, the Grand Canyon would barely show as a crack in the Valles Marineris, and Mount Everest is only about 9 km high, as compared to Mons, at a staggering 21 km above mean altitude.

Honestly, Earth gets all the dull geography.... Probably why people feel the need to see boats in slightly mishapen mountain-tops.

Ps: Swambo: I was promised that if I posted more often, I'd move up in the links. I see no such movement! This infuriates Morbo!

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