100,000 photos in, Mars continues to be stuffed with surprises

100,000 photos in, Mars continues to be stuffed with surprises

Last Updated: December 17, 2025By


NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been flying our the crimson planet for the final 20 years, beaming again photos of its floor captured by its Excessive Decision Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) digicam.

This week, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which oversees Mars missions, shared the 100,000th picture taken by HiRISE and posted it together with a collection of different Mars photos snapped by the digicam over the past twenty years.

You may see them within the publish beneath.

The exceptional photos embrace every part from affect craters and sand dunes to ice deposits and even potential touchdown websites for future human missions. It’s price noting that many HiRISE photos don’t present Mars’ anticipated reddish hue as a result of coloration processing balances the floor tones with the digicam’s blue-green and infrared bands.

The 100,000th picture, which we’ve embedded on the prime of this web page, was captured in October and exhibits mesas (flat-topped hills or plateaus with steep sides) and dunes inside Syrtis Main, a area about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Jezero Crater, which is at the moment being explored by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

Scientists at the moment are analyzing the picture in a bid to raised perceive the supply of windblown sand that will get trapped within the area’s panorama, and which ultimately type dunes.

“HiRISE hasn’t simply found how completely different the Martian floor is from Earth, it’s additionally proven us how that floor adjustments over time,” MRO challenge scientist Leslie Tamppari said on the area company’s web site, including: “We’ve seen dune fields marching together with the wind and avalanches careening down steep slopes.”

The topic of the milestone picture was advised by a highschool scholar by means of the HiWish web site, which permits anybody to recommend components of Mars to review.

“Fast information releases, in addition to imaging targets advised by the broader science neighborhood and public, have been a trademark of HiRISE,” stated the digicam’s principal investigator, Shane Byrne, of the College of Arizona in Tucson. “100 thousand photos similar to this one have made Mars extra acquainted and accessible for everybody.”

The MRO has sufficient gasoline to assist operations till the mid-2030s, so we will sit up for seeing lots extra gorgeous photos from the spacecraft, giving scientists the possibility to study much more in regards to the distant planet.  


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