Images of the desolate and windswept Martian surface are not the most encouraging indications of life. But they will nevertheless help scientists in their search for evidence of liquid water and, ultimately, life on the Red Planet.
This picture shows rocky hills, or buttes, in a dusty terrain similar to Monument Valley in Utah and Arizona. The valleys between the buttes are strewn with boulders the size of large houses. The image, captured by NASA鈥檚 Mars Global Surveyor craft and released last week, covers an area about 1.5 kilometres wide that lies just south-west of the rugged Cerberus region.
Mars Global Surveyor was launched in 1997 and has been in a polar 鈥渕apping鈥� orbit of Mars since 1999. Its high-resolution Mars Orbiter Camera has captured nearly 124,000 images so far, which have been used to help determine landing sites for two NASA robots that are due to arrive at the planet later this year. The robots will rove over the Martian surface looking for signs of water.
Advertisement