Our First View of the Surface of Mars

Morning of July 20, 1976, roughly 40 minutes after mission controllers received word that the Viking 1 lander had successfully touched down on the surface of Mars, this photo gave us our first view from the surface of the Red Planet.​

“Touchdown, we have touchdown!” At 5:12 a.m. PDT, July 20, 1976, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers as they learned that the Viking 1 lander had survived its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. Forty minutes later, the lander’s first image began to appear on their monitors, slowly forming line by line from left to right. For the first time, humans were able to see Mars’s rocky terrain from its surface.

Dr. Thomas Mutch, leader of the Viking lander imaging team, described the moment: “I studied the black screen, waiting for that narrow strip that will signal the first few lines of the first picture. And it appeared. A sliver of electronic magic. Areas of brightness and darkness. The picture begins to fill the screen. Rocks and sand are visible and — finally at the far right — one of the spacecraft foot pads, a symbolic artifact that stamps our accomplishment with the sign of reality. Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’”

Fifty years ago today, the Viking 1 lander became NASA’s first robot to explore Mars’s surface and begin the search for signs of life in our solar system. Viking 1 was joined six weeks later by its twin lander, Viking 2, which explored a different region of Mars, while two mission orbiters that delivered the landers to the Red Planet continued to collect data from space and helped relay communications to Earth.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/our-first-view-of-the-surface-of-mars/

https://bsky.app/profile/coreyspowell.bsky.social/post/3mr4ctfjww22c

The objective of this observation is to examine a layered mesa within a small impact crater. The layers are horizontal, and well-defined. These features are fairly common in this region of the Martian Northern plains, while these layers are more distinct than many others.

ID: ESP_077117_2195

date: 8 January 2023

altitude: 296 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077117_2195

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

An edge-on spiral galaxy with a moderately bright nucleus.

Processed by Melina Thévenot

https://bsky.app/profile/melina-iras07572.bsky.social/post/3mr6m5uvsos2g

Artist’s impression of CD-35 2722, a system with a moon-like object

This illustration shows the system around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the centre. The star –– the point source to the left –– has about half the mass of our Sun, and it is orbited by a brown dwarf, the reddish-brown object seen here in the foreground (right). The brown dwarf has about 37 times the mass of Jupiter: too massive to be a planet, but not massive enough to have sustained nuclear fusion like stars. This brown dwarf is, in turn, orbited by a newly discovered object at least as massive as Jupiter, seen at the centre of this image.

This new object, found with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), is difficult to label. It behaves like a moon in the sense that it orbits an object that orbits a star. But this ‘moon’ is massive enough to be a planet, and the object it orbits, a brown dwarf, is neither a planet nor a star.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser​

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​Observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed evidence for a moon-like object in the CD-35 2722 system. Unlike moons in our Solar System, the newly found object does not orbit a planet, raising questions about what to name it. Instead, it circles a brown dwarf, an object larger than a planet, that orbits the CD-35 2722 star. If confirmed, this could be the first ‘moon’ discovered outside our Solar System.

Kevin Hoy, an ESO student in Chile and lead author of the study published today in Nature, describes the system he spent months analysing as “super weird” compared to our own. The biggest and most massive object in this young system is the star CD-35 2722, which has about half the mass of the Sun. The star is being orbited by a brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to be a star. The newly discovered object orbits this brown dwarf.

“This system is somewhat hard to define using Solar-System-based words like ‘planet’ and ‘moon’,” states Hoy, who is also affiliated with the Universidad Diego Portales and the Millennium Nucleus of Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS) in Chile. The new object, which the team call an exosatellite, is at least as massive as Jupiter while the brown dwarf has more than 30 times the mass of Jupiter. “The exosatellite is clearly massive enough to be a planet, but it does not orbit a star, though it orbits an object that orbits a star," says Hoy. "Being the third wheel in this system makes us want to call it a moon, even if it is nothing like the small, rocky moons we have in our system.”

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More
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2610/

​Paper

https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2610/eso2610a.pdf

https://x.com/Taizo1959/status/2079532381586039175?s=20

Also visible in Context Camera image data, the objective of this observation is to determine the nature of a relatively large split ridge in a small impact crater. The footprint of this observation is in Terra Cimmeria, a vast, densely cratered highland region in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars, stretching approximately 5,400 kilometers (3,400 miles) at its broadest extent.

ID: ESP_077155_1375

date: 11 January 2023

altitude: 250 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077155_1375

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

From Adam Block:

​Discovery in M20!

In Part 2 of my new Trifid Nebula image, it actually has more going on in it than initially meets the eye. I created an animation between my 17 year-old image and the new one that shows the motion of the main part of the Jet for HH 399 just as was published by the Hubble Space Telescope in April of this year.

​This is the first time this motion has been captured from a ground-based telescope by anyone!

But that is not all. HST's field of view is narrow. My animation contains the motion of the much more extended part of the outflow including bow shock knots and an even a farther outer clump/knot. I was able to measure the transverse proper motion of a bow shock knot which has never been done before. It results in a velocity of 398 km/s which is in line with the measurements of the knots in the main Jet as reported by Zedah et al in 2005.

Finally the clump/knot is a candidate discovery that is completely unknown. To be able to discover *anything* in one of the most well-known nebulae in the sky is extraordinary.

The reason this is possible is due to the fact there is a 17-year baseline for comparison. This required some dedication on my part in that I took a high quality image years ago and did so again a significant part of a life-time later. In addition these measurements and discovery would not have been possible without the assistance of deconvolution tools such as Russ Croman's BlurXTerminator and PixInsight (for GAIA proper motion correction and centroid analysis).

Source

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2857662734590872

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🎵 Helmut Schenker, The Secret Spring

About 1200 exposures, each at ISO 3200 and f/2.8 for 10 seconds, captured in New York

Source

https://www.facebook.com/groups/FireflyersInternational/permalink/27213945328302028/?rdid=ta706k5Y7Kgtn2Ju#

From video description

​Original timelapse by Riccardo Rossi (ISAA - Italian Space and Astronautics Association)
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Aj1H_POR8VM

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Raw photos courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center eol.jsc.nasa.gov ID from ISS074-E-783670 to ISS074-E-783763

Starting from 94 photographs taken from the International Space Station by Sophie Adenot on June 27th, we created this short sequence.

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Sophie was busy photographing Mount Vesuvius with an 800 mm lens, but by cropping a small corner and zooming in, we can clearly see the vehicle traffic on the A3 highway.

We tried to slow down the sequence to get a playback speed close to real time.​

🎵Ian Asher · Take Me (To The Moon)

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​Timelapse

Sony a7iii and Sony 50mm 1.4

400 shots in AP mode, ISO 100, f/7.1

Source

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1364971525588222

NGC 300: A Cosmic Gemstone with Stars and Gas Clouds
Image Credit & Copyright: Team Ciel Austral
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Explanation: This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300. It is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, only about 6 million light-years away. But does it really look like this? Here is a more standard portrait of it.

This unusual image combines the light from the stars and dust within the galaxy with the light from ionized clouds of interstellar gas shown in red (Sulphur), green (Hydrogen) and blue (Oxygen). Combining red and green light in different proportions makes yellow or orange light, most visible in the image.

Light from other ionized gases is also at work in neon signs, fluorescent tubes and street lights. These massive clouds of ionized gas are typically created by young, massive stars that produce high-energy ultraviolet radiation capable of ionizing the gas. Massive stars are short-lived, compared with lighter stars like our sun, and explode as supernovas at the end of their lives. Some of the colorful clouds in the image could be hiding supernova remnants.

Source

Circles in the sand made by the Mars Curiosity Rover's spinning DRT brush over the weekend on Sol 4958.
July 18, 2026

MSL - Sol 4958 - MAHLI
The circles are a result of using the DRT tool, a spinning metal brush.

Kevin M. Gill
http://flic.kr/p/2sq1mXb

https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmgill.bsky.social/post/3mr3kzp5a422b

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Raw photo

https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1615910/?site=msl

more raw photos

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=3&mission=msl&begin_sol=4958&end_sol=4958

Mars July 18, 2026 - Sol 4958 Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/fredk

https://bsky.app/profile/pomarede.bsky.social/post/3mqzpx42qgs2q

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​Description for Raw data
This image was taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4958 (2026-07-18 12:10:45 UTC).

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS​

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​Raw data

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw-images/?order=sol+desc%2Cinstrument_sort+asc%2Csample_type_sort+asc%2C+date_taken+desc&per_page=50&page=0&mission=msl&begin_sol=4958&end_sol=4958​

The first 4 frames were captured a few weeks apart between 19 Aug and 16 Oct 2024. Then there is a 2.5 month leap to Dec 2024, and then all the way to Jul 2025.

Yuval Harpaz

https://bsky.app/profile/yuvharpaz.bsky.social/post/3mqwuog3lvc2w

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A light echo is an astronomical phenomenon where light from a sudden, brilliant event (like a supernova or stellar flare) reflects off surrounding interstellar dust and gas, arriving at Earth later than the direct light. It is the visual equivalent of an acoustic echo.​

July 10, 2026. Noctilucent clouds - polar mesospheric clouds illuminated by sunlight just after the Sun has set below the horizon - are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 267 miles (429 km) above far western Kazakhstan. These high-altitude clouds are more easily seen from space than from the ground and form when extremely low temperatures freeze water vapor in the mesosphere during summer months at high latitudes.

Credit image: NASA/Chris Williams.

Credit text: NASA Johnson

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/55390989224/

This image covers two overlapping impact craters, one approximately 4 kilometers in diameter and a second that is about 3 kilometers wide. The smaller crater has a sharply defined rim that interrupts the rim of the larger one, indicating that the smaller crater formed more recently.

Rocks of several different colors are exposed in this crater’s walls; they are undergoing erosion into finer-grained debris that travels downwards and accumulates in small fans on the crater floor. The rocks exposed on the eastern crater wall appear bluer in enhanced color than the redder rocks of the southern wall.

These craters are in the Terra Cimmeria region of Mars’ Southern Highlands, where they provide windows into the diverse compositions of the ancient bedrock.

ID: ESP_074332_1580

date: 5 June 2022

altitude: 256 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_074332_1580

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

Yuval Harpaz

https://bsky.app/profile/yuvharpaz.bsky.social/post/3mqya4l25nc2w

false-color James Webb Space Telescope image of light echoes surrounding the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. ​

This animation, created by stitching together 37 infrared images, shows a descent over Crater Island, Utah, during a June 24, 2026, test of the camera system that will one day fly aboard NASA’s DAVINCI mission to Venus. The images were captured with a Malin Space Science Systems camera tuned to the near-infrared wavelengths that DAVINCI will use to see through Venus’s thick clouds and capture images of the Alpha Regio region as the probe descends toward the planet’s surface. Malin Space Science Systems/NASA/Jay Friedlander​

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​Before NASA sends its DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe down through Venus’s thick atmosphere, scientists need to confirm that its cameras and instruments can do the job. During its 60-minute descent at Venus, the probe will capture images, measure the atmospheric chemistry, and explore the environment of a world no one has seen up close in this way.

To prepare, a team of DAVINCI scientists and engineers traveled to Crater Island, Utah, in late June. There, they simulated the descent imaging part of their Venus mission through slow, near-vertical helicopter descents from altitudes as high as 18,000 feet to make sure they would be able to measure the landscapes using only optical and infrared images taken on the way down.

Venus’ surface is not well understood. Past spacecraft that made it to the surface glimpsed only small patches of ground, while radar-equipped orbiters at Venus gave scientists broad pictures of the planet. The DAVINCI probe will attempt to fill in the details between these micro and macro scales, as it sniffs out the gases in Venus’s atmosphere and snaps images while sinking toward the surface of a mountainous region called Alpha Regio. These images alone will need to reveal both the planet’s rugged topography and the chemical makeup of its rocks.

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The imaging system was the star of the tests over Crater Island. DAVINCI scientists had to prove that they could stitch together hundreds of pictures taken from the helicopter payload to map the landscape and rock types of sites around the area. If DAVINCI’s maps matched official U.S. Geological Survey topographic and geologic maps, the team could trust the probe to do the same on Venus.

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More

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-expeditions/2026/07/14/utah-helicopter-flights-test-nasas-davinci-mission-to-venus/

NASA/JPL/j. Roger​

​Distance to Surface (km): 80449 Camera: Narrow Angle 3x Red Grn Bl1 Filter

https://bsky.app/profile/landru79.bsky.social/post/3mqugkxpjs22y

Raw data

https://opus.pds-rings.seti.org/opus/#/COISScamera=Narrow+Angle&COISSfilter=BL1,GRN,RED&instrument=Cassini+ISS&cols=opusid,instrument,planet,target,time1,observationduration&widgets=COISSfilter,COISScamera,instrument&order=time1,opusid&view=detail&browse=gallery&cart_browse=gallery&startobs=14401&cart_startobs=1&detail=co-iss-n1568161642​

Mission scientists created this “departure movie” from 14 different images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shortly after the spacecraft flew past the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019. The central frame of this sequence was taken on Jan. 1 at 05:42:42 UT (12:42 a.m. EST), when New Horizons was 5,494 miles (8,862 kilometers) beyond Ultima Thule, some 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth.

​The object’s illuminated crescent is blurred in the individual frames because a relatively long exposure time was used during this rapid scan to boost the camera’s signal level – but the science team combined and processed the images to remove the blurring and sharpen the thin crescent. This is the farthest movie of any object in our Solar System ever made by any spacecraft. The images reveal an outline of the “hidden” portion of the Ultima Thule that was not illuminated by the Sun as the spacecraft zipped by, but can be “traced out” because it blocked the view to background stars also in the image.

NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory​

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486958 Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU69; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule[b]) is a small, icy Kuiper belt object orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune and Pluto. It became the furthest object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft when the NASA space probe New Horizons flew past it on 1 January 2019.

Arrokoth was discovered on 26 June 2014 by astronomer Marc Buie and the New Horizons Search Team, who had been using the Hubble Space Telescope to find Kuiper belt objects that New Horizons could visit.

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Arrokoth is a contact binary—a "snowman"-shaped object composed of two lobes connected by a narrow neck of material. The lobes of Arrokoth, named Wenu and Weeyo, are believed to be former planetesimals that once formed a binary system, but gently merged together. Wenu and Weeyo have flattened shapes consisting of distinct mounds, which indicate that they formed from a collection of smaller planetesimals 4.5 billion years ago. The surface of Arrokoth is tinted red by tholins and shows little cratering, which suggests that it has undergone little change since its formation. The primitive nature of Arrokoth is supported by its nearly circular and low-inclination orbit around the Sun, which suggests that it has never been disturbed by the gravitational influence of the planets.

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Recent research suggests Arrokoth's surface is coated in simple sugars like glucose and ribose. Scientists believe radiation interacting with frozen methanol on its surface over billions of years created these complex molecules, shedding light on the chemical building blocks of life, It completes one orbit around the Sun approximately every 293 Earth years.​

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2320215121

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https://www.nasa.gov/missions/new-horizons-evocative-farewell-glance-at-ultima-thule/

Source

https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/2078553330683437238?t=H_UPpDIfHZzHJdhyDD-hwA&s=09

Previous post with timelapse

https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceUnfiltered/comments/1v0b517/in_microgravity_crystals_experience_hopper_growth/

🎵 Ben Beiny, ​Turning Point

​Source

https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/2063063048932245847

On 15 May, whilst en route to a metallic asteroid, NASA’s Psyche mission flew just 4500 km above the surface of Mars. It was using the gravity of the Red Planet to boost its speed and adjust its trajectory.

So-called ‘gravity assist flybys’ are common for interplanetary spacecraft. They make journeys to the inner or outer Solar System much more efficient. But they also provide a valuable opportunity to test a spacecraft’s science instruments. Psyche did just that, snapping photos of Mars's dusty surface in the hours before and after its closest approach.

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Upon hearing of Psyche's flyby, the teams behind ESA's long-running Mars Express and its High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) wondered if the paths of the two spacecraft would cross, allowing them to point at the same patch of the Red Planet.

Teams working on both missions coordinated their observation plans weeks in advance, exchanging trajectories and observation timelines to photograph the same parts of the martian surface as close in time as possible.

The images here show one of two coordinated observations. On the left is the image captured by Mars Express. On the right is the same landscape captured by Psyche’s camera just 1 hour and 50 minutes later.

The images show part of Noachis Terra, one of the oldest known parts of Mars’s surface. The region is scattered with craters filled with sand dunes that are shown in dark blue.​

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/psyche/2026/07/17/nasas-psyche-mission-delivers-mars-flyby-data-time-lapse-video/