                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2024 March 23

                 Ares 3 Landing Site: The Martian Revisited
                     HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

   Explanation: This close-up from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's
   HiRISE camera shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in
   southern Acidalia Planitia. A striking shade of blue in standard HiRISE
   image colors, to the human eye the area would probably look grey or a
   little reddish. But human eyes have not gazed across this terrain,
   unless you count the eyes of NASA astronauts in the scifi novel The
   Martian by Andy Weir. 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-diameter 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.

                      Tomorrow's picture: looking back
     __________________________________________________________________

       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
                   NASA Web Privacy, Accessibility Notices
                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

