After
circling the red planet for more than eight months, NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken images
of three spacecraft that the agency had previously sent to the Martian surface.
The orbiter provided high-resolution images of the Spirit rover [image]
that has been active on the surface since 2004 and of the two Viking
landers that reached Mars some 30 years ago.
Aerial
views of the surrounding terrain and detailed features are helping scientists
get a new perspective on some familiar sights [image].
"We
know these sites well at ground level through the eyes of the cameras on Spirit
and the Viking landers," said the project's
principal investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona.
"Applying that knowledge as we view the new orbital images will help us
interpret what we see in orbital images from other parts of Mars never seen
from ground level."
In addition
to helping scientists plan for future missions and current surface activities,
the images have also left them in awe.
The view of
Viking Lander 1 [image]
shows the spacecraft's back shell 850 feet from the probe and its heat shield
some 3,400 feet away from the probe. The spacecraft landed on the planet's surface
on July 1976.
"The
biggest surprise is that you can still see what appears to be the parachute
after 30 years," said Tim Parker of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Images of
the Viking Lander 2 site are especially interesting to NASA scientists as they
are considering it a candidate landing site for NASA's Phoenix
Mars Lander mission, scheduled to launch next summer.
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