A close-up of the weathered craters of Acidalia Planitia taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. But wait, isn’t that a key location in the Andy Weir (and Ridley Scott) yarn ‘The Martian’? Why, yes, it is. To wit:
The novel chronicles the adventures of Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded at the fictional Mars mission Ares 3 landing site corresponding to the coordinates of this cropped HiRISE frame. For scale Watney’s 6-meter-diametre habitat at the site would be about 1/10th the diameter of the large crater. Of course, the Ares 3 landing coordinates are only about 800 kilometers north of the (real life) Carl Sagan Memorial Station, the 1997 Pathfinder landing site.
(Image: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA)
Sponsored Link
Hank at NASA couldn’t even be fupped to put a red filter on before photographing the weather-beaten pebble dash on his shed. Sure, no-one will notice and no one calls it the “red planet” anymore anyway. How much does NASA say this outstanding photo (that could be anything blue really) has cost? $10m?
Yawn@eoin. Fascinating pic tho