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Photo Essay: The Red Album
Mars’ foremost photographers pick their favorite images of their favorite planet.
By airspacemag.com
airspacemag.com, November 18, 2008
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Asked to nominate one place as Mars’ branch office on Earth, you could come up with a short list of candidates: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where most Martian spacecraft are built; the University of Arizona, which just ran the Phoenix lander mission from its Tucson campus; Ray Bradbury’s house.
Less well known, but every bit as Mars-centric, is the San Diego headquarters of Malin Space Science Systems, where planetary scientist Mike Malin and his colleagues build instruments for exploring the Red Planet. Most of the spacecraft sent to Mars in the past decade have had one of the company’s cameras on board, and the number of images added to NASA’s archive as a result has reached well over 260,000.
We asked Malin and his colleagues to pick some of their favorites, which you can browse in the gallery at right. Among them is this widely reproduced image of layered outcrops in West Candor, one of the canyons of Valles Marineris. Taken in 1999, early in the primary mission of the Mars Global Surveyor, this photo was one of the first to show hundreds of layers in the canyon, suggesting a more complex geological history than scientists had expected. Just one of the many surprises and delights from the Malin collection.
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Comments
Absolutely Amazing! There's a lot to be said for intensity. I wish that we had more like him, especially in the NASA program design and management offices.
Posted by Miles Wade on November 23,2008 | 10:04AM
Fantastic! There is no way anyone who views these can deny the existence of water somewhere on the planet. I still hope someday we will be able to get equally good photos from the other seven planets in our system but until then, I look forward to the day our explorers are setting foot on Mars!
Posted by John E. Truitt on December 30,2008 | 01:43PM
I'm young, and interested in astronomy. When I read this, it makes me more interested. I think, better we share this with others so our next generation will love the nature
Posted by Steedward on March 11,2009 | 08:45PM
I am an elementary art teacher. This year we are going space crazy. With Mars being closest to the Earth this summer than it will be for decades, I would love to know more about your work. My son is a gifted photographer who loves to go out in search of the perfect photo op, but I think Mars is the prize. The galaxy like an artist's palette on a super sized scale. Sincerely, Jan Alexander
Posted by Jan Alexander on June 4,2009 | 12:20PM