12 Amazing Pictures Of Mars!

12. The Star Trek Logo

Sometimes the best discoveries in the world come from simply looking at things on the surface of something. Humanity is still trying to observe every inch of Mars to help us get a better understanding of the planet at large. And the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently found something in the Hellas Planitia, a large plain within the Hellas impact basin in the southern hemisphere of Mars, that has caught the eye of pretty much everyone. The Star Trek Star Fleet Logo.

No, really, check it out! It almost literally is the Star Fleet logo from the legendary TV series and subsequent movies. Sure, it’s not a perfect match, but it’s hard not to recognize that symbol if you’ve watched something from the long-running franchise.

“Enterprising viewers will make the discovery that these features look conspicuously like a famous logo,” the University of Arizona, which manages the MRO HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, said in a statement. “You’d be right, but it’s only a coincidence.”

Sure, it’s a coincidence, one made by many natural effects on Mars as scientists deduced. But the fact remains…Star Trek is on Mars! Which is poetic, because the series over the years has talked about how Star Fleet colonized Mars and it led to many key decisions about law and ethics and its people in order to build the Star Fleet that we get in the main series.

Of course, they had colonized the planet before 2019…so we’re a bit behind schedule. Get moving NASA! We need to go where no man has gone before!

Seriously though, for a fanboy (of which I am one), this is something that just speaks to you. Because on a planet we’re looking to colonize…we have a picture of something that inspires us even more to colonize it!

Engage!

11. Mars and Its Terrain

When it comes to Mars, we often see it as a whole, meaning that we view it from the perspective of someone who is looking through a telescope or from a probe that has passed by the planet. But in this particular shot, we get to see more of the terrain and the texture of Mars if you will, and it’s pretty cool if we’re being honest here.

I mean, look at the outcropping that is going on here in this shot. We can see better than ever that Mars isn’t just a flat planet, but one full of ridges and craters (many of which were caused by meteors striking the surface…just saying) and that’s still only one shot of the planet.

Imagine if we could get more pics like this one? To be able to see all the contours and rough edges of Mars from a similar style of shot, wouldn’t that be cool?

Speaking of cool, seeing Mars like this amongst the stars? Yeah, that’s cool.

10. Mars Rover

On the surface (somewhat pun intended), this may look like a simple Mars rover as it has landed on Mars to do research and study of the planet. And it is. But I want you to think about this in the grander scale of things. While right now humanity is trying in many different facets to get to Mars in order to colonize it, the first Mars rover to land on the planet, Pathfinder, was a HUGE accomplishment for both NASA and JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) and the human race. it was the first of its kind to go and land on the planet and still operate on it!

After that, we sent many more rovers and probes and satellites to the planet so that we could study Mars in all of its areas that we could reach. Without these rovers, we wouldn’t have found water on Mars, it would’ve only been a theory that we couldn’t prove. Without these rovers, we couldn’t have found out that there are parts of Mars that could be used to benefit humanity if we truly do colonize the planet, and on and on!

You see a simple Mars rover, I see something that helped shape the way we think about Mars.

9. Blue Clouds?

There is an oddity that just doesn’t seem to make sense when it comes to Mars, and that oddity is that it has blue clouds, and for the longest time no one really know where they came from. This picture posted by NASA is a good shot of what they’re talking about.

No one is really sure where the clouds come from or why they form like they do, especially since Mars is a “red planet”. So how exactly does this happen?

Well, a study from scientists studying Mars seems to indicate that “clouds” are nothing more than smoke, smoke caused by meteors and other space rocks slamming into the surface of Mars. The study alleges that every day, 2-3 tons of meteors, comets, and more hit the surface of the planet. And when they do, they bring up smoke particles into the air, and thus create a kind of “blue cloud”.

This was tested via computer simulations, and it seems to back up their hypothesis. Furthermore, the tests indicate that these meteor impacts actually help raise the temperature of the planet at points. And they even state that this could mean bits of other worlds (which is where meteors and such come from in parts)  are affecting Mars, and possibly even Earth!

“We’re used to thinking of Earth, Mars and other bodies as these really self-contained planets that determine their own climates,” lead study author Victoria Hartwick, a graduate student in the University of Colorado’s Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, said in a statement. “But climate isn’t independent of the surrounding solar system.”

It’s an interesting theory, one that isn’t fully proven, but if it is true, it does change how we need to look at Mars in the literal sense.

8. Mars As A Whole

So we’ve looked at various parts of Mars so far, but now let’s observe Mars as a whole, shall we? Let’s take a look at it and see just what makes it so special. Obviously, the planet is red, which is honestly one of the most defining features of Mars as a whole. That’s even why it’s called the “Red Planet” because it’s so dang red! But it’s more than that. 

Looking at it like this, with the planet slightly shaded in shadow and amongst the stars it has a different kind of feel, don’t you think? One that is a bit more ominous and foreboding, you know? 

Mars was named after the Roman God of War so that would track in a certain way. But it also has a mysterious tone to it in a certain way.

Tell me, which way do you see it in this photo?

7. The Deserts Of Mars

There’s a reason why Mars for a very long time was considered an “uninhabitable planet”. Because when you see pictures like this, you see just how barren the planet is, and it’s a huge obstacle to overcome as we try to go and colonize it in the upcoming years.

But this is also a picture that shows just how much Mars has changed over the millennial. As at one time scientists theorize (and have proven in part) that Mars was once a much more lush planet, even having massive oceans and lakes. But then, the atmosphere got thin, and when that happened, the water was almost literally sucked into space, leaving Mars barren.

This is a harrowing reminder that certain things in Earth’s atmosphere could happen to leave us like Mars.

6. Impact

If you look at this particular picture of Mars, you’re going to see a lot of craters popping up all over the place. And believe me when I saw that this is a sight that you can witness all over Mars. But why exactly is that? That would be because Mars, due to its very thin atmosphere, has been pelted by meteors of all sizes over the course of universal history.

Many scientists note that certain meteorites found on Mars are of interstellar origin, and have had major impact (pun intended) on Mars and how it is right now. 

For further proof of just how much these meteorites have battered and bruised the red planet, there have been fragments of meteorites from Mars’ surface that have landed on Earth! That’s right, something impacted Mars so hard that chunks of it shot out of the atmosphere and made its way to Earth.

Talk about a long trip!

5. Perspective

To be clear, this is one of a few photos on this list that isn’t ‘exactly’ a picture of Mars, but this shot does symbolize a very important point about Mars…it’s our neighbor. Sure, it isn’t THAT close to the Earth, and it would cause a lot of problems if it was, but that’s not the point here. Rather, the point is that one of the main reasons why we’re trying to get to Mars versus other contenders for colonization (like Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan) is because it’s both close enough and feasible enough to get to and colonize.

Titan has a better atmosphere and gravity, but it’s too far away. Venus is closer, but the intense greenhouse effect would destroy all hopes of colonization at present.

So not unlike a neighborhood, if you need help, you go to the one that has the best chance of helping you out in the shortest amount of distance.

4. Mars and the Sun

There’s a big question that people ask when it comes to Mars, and that’s how the sun “affects it”. Well honestly, it affects it more than you think. You see, the reason Earth is able to survive like it does is because the atmosphere is able to deflect a lot of harmful radiation as well as keep heat in the planet in a meaningful way. But how does it affect Mars? 

The answer is…a lot. Because of Mars’ thin atmosphere, all the radiation that the sun can possibly project onto the planet is felt. So if we were to go to the planet we’d need to be wearing protective suits that would go and shield us from that radiation. Not to mention, the surface of the planet has a temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit on average! Which is really cold, and it too is because the atmosphere doesn’t do what Earth’s does for us.

3. Desert Beauty

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this is a picture that was illustrated to show that even in the barren wastes of a planet like Mars there is beauty to be found. And that’s the truth, while Mars may seem like a very harsh and unforgivable wasteland, that doesn’t mean that it can’t house beautiful things for us to behold.

After all, that’s one of the reasons we want to go to Mars, to see all that it has to offer up close instead of viewing it at a distance.

2. Water On Mars

If you think about where we are as a race right now in terms of trying to colonize the stars, the reason we’re moving so fast to try and get to Mars is because we know we have a chance to live there. But why do we know that? We’ve known Mars is there for many centuries, and yet it’s only recently that we truly decide to try and colonize it? What changed? What made us change our minds? Water, water on Mars changed our minds.

It had been theorized for quite some time that water on Mars could truly exist, but until we found a frozen lake on Mars (which this picture beautifully illustrates), we didn’t think it actually had any water left. We thought it was all gone…and we were wrong to think that.

Now, we have proof that if put in the right places, humanity could work on Mars because we have a source of water to get. Which means we can not only hydrate, but grow crops, and do many other activities that a colony would need water to complete.

It may not look like much as it stands right now, but this picture is proof that humanity does have a chance on other planets.

1. The Goal

Ok, I admit it! This particular picture isn’t real as we haven’t landed on Mars yet. Keyword here is “yet”. After all, we’re still in the planning stages of getting man to Mars. But we are on our way! Between NASA and SpaceX (yes, we’ve already talked about it in this post) there are HUGE steps being taken to go and get man to the Red Planet. Which means that one day, we will be able to take a shot like this not in a computer program, but in real life.

Think about it, when this photo is taken in the future, it’ll likely be the biggest thing on our world, the biggest event in recent memory, it’ll be on the newspapers and internet all over! All because humanity finally accomplished its dream of making it to another world.

So yeah, right now it’s a fantasy, but a lot of things in human history have been dubbed fantasy and then they became reality, it’ only a matter of time.