Monday, May 26, 2008

Ice Station Phoenix

The Mars lander Phoenix has touched down successfully at Mars’s north pole; first images are being posted at its official site. My first reaction to the panoramic photograph and close-ups, for what it's worth: ice-wedge polygons at every scale, water-ice right under that dusty surface.

And in another part of the Solar System, Cassini has imaged evidence of tectonic activity on Titan. A few years ago we didn’t know if Titan was covered in methane oceans or, if there were landforms, what they looked like. Now it is becoming a place with its own dynamic geography: chaotic hilly terrain, rivers and lakes, fault scarps, seas of dunes, volcanos ...

Meanwhile, I’m off to Norway, land of the squiggly bits. The usual spotty service will resume early in June.
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