Fly Around Candor Chasma

Candor Chasma is one of the two great valleys of the Valles Marineris. Thanks to the HiRise camera aboard Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, we can have fun flying through it while we wait for human exporers to do it for real.

Fly me to the Moon, and let- oh, sorry, Mars, then.

Thats some sweet imagery right there :yes But now I'm compelled to find that song. Its a good one. Do you have any additional information on that mission or the HiRise camera?

Well, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was the successor to the phenomenally-successful Mars Global Surveyor mission of a decade ago. It alunched in August 2005 and arrived at Mars in March of the following year.

Since then, it has been orbiting the planet and taking the best pictures ever gained from an orbital survey.

The HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment-NASA do love their acronyms!) camera is used to take breathtakingly-detailed pictures of the Martian surface. Its eagle-eye vision has even been able to spot the MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity on the surface and take pictures of them. It's a great piece of equipment. In fact, by taking pictures of the same taget a few seconds apart, it can even work as a stereoptic camera to provide 3-D images.

You can find more about the mission at the NASA website, right here.

Heh... yeah... don't get me started on acronyms :ph34r:

I wonder what its zoom is...

I view space exploration as a political problem. Would you agree that if just the United States invested 1/10 of its current military budget into raw space-science, that we could easily get to Mars inside 20 years? If we invested 1/2 our military budget into space, we could probably get to another star system inside 50 years (including travel time).

Clearly, I need to be elected President.

Given the rate our debt is growing, there won't be a US in 20 years. We haven't even begun to receive all those post-dated checks Congress keeps writing.

Well yes, there's that. Fine then, we can always pay off the debt, THEN go to Mars. I wish I could go back in time and kill Keynes.

heh, while US pays off their debt the chinese red commies (strong economy) and the crazy japanese, will get to Alpha Centauri.

The same can be said for Europe and Russia. Even if their funding is limited, they try to act smart.

Who does want to close himself in a mockup starship for a couple years dreaming of a voyage to Mars? :wub:
ESA presents European participants in 520-day simulated mission to Mars

It is supposed to test an important thing, the "human factor".
They could have scavenged lots of data from the so popular reality television shows like Big Brother, if they weren't so clearly faked to raise the audience.
But they can still get back some money by using the tapes to do a (real) reality television show of their own, if something interesting happens. :yes

This post has been edited by someone_else on Mar 15 2010, 21:15

What a truly bizarre landscape. To hell with politics, I'd gladly hitch a ride on a Chinese ship for the opportunity to go there.

K.

Bizarre is the word. The Valles Marineris is one of the largest geographical features in the Solar System. Only Earth's mid-Atlantic ridge is longer, but is far narrower, too.

I'm looking at one of my little treasures as I type, a 12" topographic globe of Mars. To the west and northwest or Marineris, you have the vast Tharsis plateau, wih its four immense shield volcanoes. Their growth appears to have stretched the Martian crust so far that it literally split asunder, carving out a valley so long that it generates dust storms that can overflow the valley and go global, and which is so long it travels for one-eighth of the circumference of the planet. Planted on Earth, it could divide the continental US from sea to shining sea.