火星上空5公尺

火星上空5公尺

2023年8月10日 Five Meters over Mars Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Ingenuity Explanation: On mission sol 872 (Earth date August 3) Ingenuity snapped this sharp image on its 54th flight above the surface of the Red Planet. During the flight the Mars Helicopter hovered about 5 meters, or just over 16 feet, above the Jezero crater floor. Tips of Ingenuity’s landing legs peek over the left and right edges in the camera’s field of view. Tracks visible near the upper right corner lead to the Perseverance Mars Rover, seen looking on from a distance at the top right edge of the frame. Planned as a brief “pop-up” flight, Ingenuity’s 54th flight lasted less than 25 seconds. It followed Ingenuity’s 53rd flight made on July 22 that resulted…

为月球车测试新轮子

为月球车测试新轮子

In this image from June 2023, an engineer watches a development model rover during a test for NASA’s Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) technology demonstration in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The team tested a new wheel design, surface navigation software, and mobility capabilities, among other aspects of the project. NASA is sending a trio of these miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. About the size of a carry-on suitcase, each of the four-wheeled rovers will drive to find a sunbathing spot, where they’ll open their solar panels and charge up. Then they’ll spend the lunar daytime conducting experiments designed…

火星上空的火卫一

火星上空的火卫一

2023年7月31日 Phobos over Mars Image Credit: ESA, DLR, FU Berlin, Mars Express; Processing & CC BY 2.0 License: Andrea Luck Explanation: Why is Phobos so dark? Phobos, the largest and innermost of the two Martian moons, is the darkest moon in the entire Solar System. Its unusual orbit and color indicate that it may be a captured asteroid composed of a mixture of ice and dark rock. The featured assigned-color picture of Phobos near the edge of Mars was captured in late 2021 by ESA‘s robot spacecraft Mars Express, currently orbiting Mars. Phobos is a heavily cratered and barren moon, with its largest crater located on the far side. From images like this, Phobos has been determined to be covered by perhaps a meter of…

史蒂克妮坑

史蒂克妮坑

2023年7月8日 Stickney Crater Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA Explanation: Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall, mathematician and wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the Red Planet’s moons in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This enhanced-color image of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers of Phobos in March of 2008. Even though the surface gravity of asteroid-like Phobos is less than 1/1000th Earth’s gravity, streaks suggest…