A beautiful Martian sunset is pic o’ the day here at the ol’ raincoaster blog.
Click here for the whole gallery of Mars Phoenix images from NASA
And here is an entertaining video of the whole liftoff-to-landing process. Alas, unlike the last one (possibly the world’s coolest Mars probe simulation) there is no NIN soundtrack. Just sing Closer really, really loudly as you watch.
Developed in the summer of 2004, this animation visulaizes launch in August 2007 and entry, descent, and landing of the Phoenix Mars Mission in May 2008. Currently the animation is in the rough-cut phase and is being modified as the spacecraft develops. The animation was created by Maas Digital under the direction of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Solar System Visualization Project.
beautiful!
And the MarsPhoenix Lander has a Twitter stream
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix
No, seriously? I might just put that in an RSS widget. Thanks!
I’m such a NASA groupie!
I’m surprised how clear that sunset photo is, and how large the sun appears.
What’s interesting to me is how we look at the picture. I immediately started analyzing the hill on the left, thinking “have I seen that before, is it somewhere I know?” because that hill does actually look like a hill I used to live near, and the human mind is so associative. Then the penny dropped that it was ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET.
You can see Uranus from there….. :)
Really? You must be very flexible.
Mystical, spiritually inspirational.